


1993

by Mollypop



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Attempt to save lives, Canon Compliant, Child Death, Child Eren Yeager, Child Levi (Shingeki no Kyojin), Child Murder, Childhood Memories, Everyone's a baby, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Levi's Gonna Be a Hero, Levi/Eren Yeager-centric, M/M, Mikasa Ackerman & Levi Are Related, Murder Mystery, Time Travel, canon spoilers, different timelines
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-25
Updated: 2017-06-04
Packaged: 2018-07-25 20:02:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 29,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7545991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mollypop/pseuds/Mollypop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I didn't really know him. No one did. We weren't friends or anything, I just sat next to him in class,"<br/>It had been fifteen years since the brutal murder of ten year old, Eren Yeager.<br/>"He stopped coming to school a week after we got back from Winter break. We all thought he might have been sick or taking a late vacation. But, the second Saturday after we got back to school I was walking to the treehouse in the woods when..."<br/>Eleven year old, Levi Ackerman, had discovered the mutilated corpse two days after the crime had taken place.</p><p>Now, he had the chance to stop it all from happening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It didn't look anything like it did on TV.

He wasn't relaxed and calm, shoulders and thighs rested back into the snow with the weight of someone who had fallen unconscious. His palms weren't upturned toward the Heavens, fingers gently coiled inward so he could feel the chilling air slip through the open spaces. His eyes hadn't been shut, so there was no pretending that he had willingly walked, naked, through the woods until he finally decided to rest. His skin didn't reflect the orange glow of the Winter's morning, shining with the exterior shell of melted snow. His expression didn't match the peaceful, angelic smile that would be plastered all over the news once the story broke. The slit in his throat didn't look like a centimeter scratch, small pumps of corn syrup trickling over his neck in thin, shining, bright red rivers to the moist edges of his hair. No.

He looked broken, joints taught and locked into place. Snow had been thrown over the curve of his left shoulder, the frozen toes of his right foot, and in the dips of his thin hip bones, like someone had half-heartedly tried to pretend he wasn't there. His skin had gone numb in the cold air, fading into a ghostly white, like a fragile piece of translucent glass shattered against the ground. Pink and violet scratches popped against him, looking like nothing compared to the yellowed-green welts of deep bruises. His temples and limbs were decorated with bright blue lines of veins pushing the skin to its near breaking point, matching the crusted shade of purple on his lips and beneath his eyes. Green irises had faded to lifeless shells of vomit coloured orbs, rolling toward the back of his skull with a permanent look of terror. They didn't even look real,-it looked like someone might have ripped the human eyes out of their sockets and shoved in what had once belonged to the haunted remains of a porcelain doll. He was covered in shit and piss, flashing shades of dehydrated orange running between his thighs and into the barely solid brown down his calves. His wrists were bound together in front of him, fingers mashing together in contorted, broken joints reaching out toward nothing. They had faded into a gentle, icy blue, while the rope burns around his wrists were scabbed and bleeding. Both his ankles had been cut in the back, so deep his left foot was nearly torn off completely. The slit in his throat was like a deep cavern, seemingly reaching down to endless extents. It looked like it wasn't even hollow, but filled with crimson, meat mucus peaking out along the edge of the cut. The blood had bubbled like a volcano, spreading across his neck and toward the curve of his chin, down to divots in his collar bones and forming an ocean in the crystallized snow. It didn't glow with a fluorescent, cinematic red-but was dried, a thick, chipping brown reaching far out from his divided neck. His nose had exploded with the dried ooze, leaking down into his gaping mouth, wide open in a perpetual scream. The blood in his mouth that didn't run down the sides of his cheeks sat like a still lake, clogging any possible way of breathing. The only clean sections of his face were the fat rivers of tear streaks from the corners of his eyes down to his jaw line. His body had swollen with the cold and the injuries. There was the distinct scent of death and feces, blood was everywhere, even spattered droplets far away decorated the snow, the visible pieces of his body adorning lesser wounds.

With how inhuman and tortured he looked, he could have been mistaken as a late Halloween prank or some teenagers playing a game. But, the butcher knife discarded above the body's head, sharing the putrid blood and the poorly placed snow, and the prints of rubber boots scattered left and right away from the woods and back into town, small red pills clinging to the heel before disappearing into the distance, made it all too real. The small, blobs of shapes leading to the body before stopping where the boy lay were enough to make the danger a close reality. He didn't look anything like he had when he would come in late and sink into his desk at school, or how he looked on the swings alone at recess, or how he looked when he hadn't been invited to birthday parties or after school events. He looked nothing like himself, but Levi knew who it was immediately.

Eren Yeager.

* * *

 

Levi pulled away from the toilet, knuckles white against the porcelain frame as he willed his eyes not to water from the aroma of his own vomit coming back to him. With a flush of the toilet, a thorough rinsing of his mouth and hands, and the straightening of his collar, he exited the company bathroom. He was greeted with a busy tax firm of employees tapping away at computers and trying to manage their own eating schedules. Several interns sprinted through the halls with cardboard trays, balancing several cups of steaming coffee and noisy bags of pastries. Levi himself had asked for a blueberry muffin, but he wasn't sure if his stomach could handle another curve ball. The copy machine's were crowded, murmurs of panic and stressed employees filling the usually peaceful building.

_"I didn't really know him. No one did. We weren't friends or anything, I just sat next to him in class"_

It had been fifteen years since the brutal murder of ten year old, Eren Yeager. Thirteen since single father, Grisha Yeager, was tried and convicted for the homicide of his only child.

An intern caught up to Levi, forehead sweaty as he handed the man a red and white bag with a puffy muffin inside. The boy had run off before Levi could grunt out a thanks. He opened the crumpled bag, noting that most of the sweet pastry had broken off into fluffy crumbs at the base of the bag. He grimaced, half disgusted by the shape and by the way his stomach flipped up toward his chest. He was about to crush the muffin back into the bag when a small woman called him over with a question about the newly installed system. While he was focussed on not getting his sweating fingerprint on her computer screen, he absentmindedly bit into the baked dough. He felt the flavour of blueberry crush between his teeth, and white cake swell toward the back of his cheeks. It tasted like vomit.

_"He was a loner. He always came in late to class and wouldn't talk to anyone all day. I don't think I've ever actually heard his voice...even teachers stopped calling on him because he just wouldn't answer. It was like he wasn't even there"_

His hometown had gone into mass hysteria, sticking close to their children's sides and creating the myth of freedom. Before Levi had moved, he remembered people claiming that Grisha Yeager was still proclaiming his innocence, and that he was only put behind bars so the police could end the public terror.

The woman stretched her limbs and thanked her boss with a bright smile, Levi just nodding and continuing on his way. He passed by the conference room, Erwin Smith's loud voice booming between the cracks in the door and vibrating the floor beneath his shoes. He rounded the corner, away from the endless rows of cubicles and into the hallway of matching offices. Halfway through, there was a metal trashcan full of Dixie cups and candy wrappers. He spit the chewed muffin inside.

_"He stopped coming to school a week after we got back from Winter break. We all thought he might have been sick or taking a late vacation. But, the second Saturday after we got back to school I was walking to the treehouse in the woods when..."_

Eleven year old, Levi Ackerman, had discovered the mutilated corpse two days after the crime had taken place. He had become a media sensation, barraged with questions about what the body looked like or what force pulled him into the woods that day. He refused to answer any questions after he had given a full statement to the police.

Levi opened his office door, shutting just hard enough for the company painting on the right wall to shake against the plaster. He wiped at the corners of his mouth with his thumb, using the other hands to chuck the dilapidated muffin onto his desk, watching it slide against the primed wood until it knocked over a picture of he and his mother.

_"I must have stared at him for twenty minutes. It didn't really hit me until a crow came along and started picking at his...That's when I came to my senses and ran home"_

Unable to cope with the haunting visuals of his classmate, Levi Ackerman was put into therapy, and he and his mother eventually left his hometown and the extended family he had been staying with, for the city. The therapist provided, had said the previous environment was hazardous for him, and the visions and nightmares would pass and his personality and emotions would settle sometime in the future.

Levi jumped when the phone ignited with an alarming ring. He glanced toward his desk phone, seeing it was still displaying the date and time, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his cellphone. Without looking at the preview screen for caller ID, his thumb flicked the phone open and the line scratched to life.

_"Like I said, he was a loner. He didn't have any friends. No one knew who he really was or what he did in his free time. He had been walking around like he was already dead for awhile. So, you can ask me all you want who might have done this to him, or if I saw anything else, but I can't tell you that information. I'm sorry"_

Three months after the discovery of Eren Yeager's body, and two years before the arrest of Grisha Yeager, the body of eleven year old, Marco Bott was also discovered. It was unknown if the cases were linked. Grisha Yeager was only tried on one count of first degree murder. Mikasa was on the other line.

_"I don't know anything about Eren Yeager"_

"Have you bought your plane tickets yet?" her monotone voice sounded robotic through the static phone lines. He wandered to his desk, settling himself down into the leather office chair facing his open laptop, screen dark, "If you wait any longer they could get fairly expensive," she sounded distant, as if she were focusing on two topics at once. Levi figured she was driving, a bad habit she never intended to stop. He clicked the spacebar of his work laptop, watching the screen come to life. His wallpaper was of him and Mikasa, aged around eighteen. She had on a royal blue graduation robe, a matching hat with a white tassel dangling from her cap and mingling between her black locks. Metals, cords, and flowers crowded her neck, outshining the half-hearted smile on her face. Her right hand was clutching a bouquet of flowers, her left awkwardly wrapped around Levi's shoulders. Mikasa's parents stood behind her, tears shining in their eyes through the camera's flash and smiles on their faces that told the world they had never been more proud. Levi's mother stood behind him, her arm wrapped around her brother's, Mikasa's father's, shoulders. Her smile was filled with pride and envy. Proud that one child of the Ackerman name had graduated high school the proper way, and envious that it wasn't her own. Levi had started taking online education courses in his second year of middle school. The photo stamp in the bottom right corner read June twenty-third, 2001.

"Hello to you, too," he scoffed, no amusement lacing his voice. He remembered a time when he and his cousin had been close. Kuchel, Levi's single mother, had fallen on hard times when she became pregnant, and moved in with her brother and newly pregnant wife. He and Mikasa had been raised like twins rather than cousins, and only extended their friendships around age eight. After the tragedy of their hometown, and Levi moving away, the separation began and hadn't slowed down since.

"You haven't RSVP'd yet," Mikasa said, ignoring the passive sarcasm. He half listened as he noticed the company's private message system. A popping sound of a near-silence settled between the two for a moment. Mikasa looking for a response and Levi not bothering to give an answer for a question unasked. It was the sound of someone still present, but just a notch above complete silence. It was cruelly uncomfortable. A small, red bubble popped above the small window, only disturbed by the tiny etching of a white number one in the center. Levi yawned as he glanced to see who the message was from, reading over the name of the man with the earth shaking voice, Erwin Smith, "Levi, my wedding? Are you planning to come or not? It would be nice to see you,"

_From: Smith, Erwin (3:47 PM): Mike and I are going out for a few drinks and a bite to eat after work. Want to tag along?_

"I know about your wedding," Levi sighed, leaning back in his chair and counting backwards from ten. He glanced toward the clock: 4:49 PM. Nearly an hour since Erwin had tried reaching out to him. He figured since the conference was still going when passed, he probably wouldn't check his messages, but it might be rude not to properly turn him down.

"Jean asked you to be his best man. It would be nice if you at least threw him a party beforehand...or pretended to be excited," Levi could practically picture her face. Both their faces were naturally more stern and unemotional than most, but her lips would always quiver when she was upset. Her voice was calm and soft, ghosting over metaphorical egg shells, but stern enough to know that he would have to do both of these things in the long run. Her lips would quiver, but her eyes would stand strong.

"He asked me because I'm your cousin, not because he actually expected anything of me," Levi balanced the phone between his ear and his shoulder, pushing to the front of his seat and typing a quick, vague response, "If he wanted a party, he could have asked Armin. He, Armin, and Marco used to be-"

"Levi," Mikasa snapped. A warning. He had gone too far. Jean was probably sitting in the passenger's seat, staying silent and peppy through the albeit awkward conversation, expression sinking at the mention of his once best friend. Another near-silence filled his ear, obscured with the gentle slaps of a keyboard.

_From: Ackerman, Levi (4:51 PM): Can't today. I have plans._

"I'm sorry," he muttered, shutting the laptop closed after looking at the messages side by side. He didn't quite feel sorry, and he knew she felt the same way by the way the near-silence wasn't broken. It was then he realized Jean would still be at work, so the popping static was a result of his cousin at a loss for words, not because he had said anything wrong.

"It would have been nice if Marco was his best man, yes. But, Jean said he'll be there in spirit and we're pouring a drink for him. Armin is dealing with law school, and we didn't want to stress him out anymore than he already is," she sighed, her voice hinting toward fond memories. Levi reached toward the several folders sitting neatly at the corner of his desk, staring at the stained ring of coffee on the top-most yellow flap, wondering if he had even had coffee that day, "So, if it makes you happy to be right, you are his second choice. But, you're still a choice,"

He stood, bouncing the folders on the flat desk surface until they sat in his hands as a straight unit. He placed the folders atop his computer, pulling the rectangular pile to his chest and making his way across the room, where his briefcase leaned against a wall, "Armin's in law school?" he asked, eyebrow twitching in slight curiosity, but not genuine interest. There was a distorted sound through the line, which he guessed was his cousin nodding instead of responding, or maybe a figment of his imagination, "Do I have to bring a date?" he clicked his bag shut, lifting it by the longest strap and slinging it over his shoulder.

"You don't have to, but it would make Aunt Kuchel happy," she let out a somewhat chuckle while Levi shut the door, light this time so nothing could shake, "She's been worried about you lately," she added, her words less cheerful and more careful. As though the truth of the conversation was finally escaping through stale air. He walked around the corner, back toward the sea of monochrome cubicles, a building of complete grey. He'd always forget to notice until right before he left. Standing in the doorway to the conference room, reviewing notes with a secretary, was Erwin.

"She's always worried about me," Levi pointed out. Erwin glanced over as the shorter man's frame came into view. His slicked into place, blonde hair was in perfect contrast to the tie hanging loose around his chest. Grey. The larger man opened his mouth to say something, showing a wide smile of coffee-stained teeth. Levi held his hand up immediately, not even glancing his coworker's way before pointing to the phone pressed against his ear. He didn't stop or glance behind him to check if Erwin might have been offended. If he had read the private message, he didn't want to answer any detailed questions.

"Well, can you blame her?"

"Don't start," he snapped, opting to take the short two flights of stairs rather than the crowded elevator down to the car park.

"We're just looking out for you," Mikasa backed up, not sounding like she was going to let the conversation go, but enough to indicate she didn't want anything hostile. A short near-silence formed while Levi's footsteps bounced against the empty stairwell, Mikasa thinking of the proper words to say. It wasn't until the car park door slammed shut behind him that he heard her take a deep breath in, "It's been fifteen years," he walked in the direction of his car. Grey, "Aunt Kuchel said your last therapist recommended medication. I know you turned it down, but it might do you some good. It could..." the beeping call of a car unlocked sounded, breaking the light grey with flashes of siren red, "It could set your emotions straight. When we were younger you were different. You were happy and had plans and friends and even a cru-"

"Mikasa," he snapped, waiting until the driver's side door was shut behind him. He nearly broke the keys when he started the engine.

"Fifteen years, Levi," she drawled, extending each syllable and dragging letters. Long enough for him to pull away from his parking space and away from the concrete building, "You were the one out of all of us that got to leave, the one allowed to escape. We had to deal with the backlash and the fear, " he tapped his finger against the steering wheel, keeping pace with how fast he figured seconds were passing. Somewhere above, a thick layer of clouds began to gather in one area of sky, drifting from various directions, "What you saw was horrible, and no kid should go through that. And, I understand that seeing anything like that might mess a person up. But, we've all moved on. We've all found ways to be happy and let the past just be the past. We're getting married and moving on to amazing careers, and getting ready for children. It's time for you to move on too," he felt his left eye twitch as the left hand turn light shifted from red to green, "You could start with going out with your coworkers or a date. You can't keep living like this," the back of his jaw clicked when his teeth ground together, "We weren't even close to him. You didn't even know him,"

"That brat ruined my life," Levi muttered, voice low as the short drive to his apartment complex was almost complete, "If I hadn't seen his fucking disgusting face, you and Mom wouldn't have to worry about m-"

"It wasn't his choice to die," Mikasa kept her voice quiet, just above the muffled volume of her cousin before her."But it is your choice to be happy. If those pills can help you get back to who you are, then I say take them," he missed the right turn toward his complex, continuing to drive straight. He pictured the diner down the street, with the flickering, neon green sign and street slum both inside and out. What wasn't lingering in tattered booths with grimy quarters they picked off the street, were the lonely hearts with nothing and no one expecting them home. There was a fair share of teenage runaways and aspiring models that would be the next tragic news story. After three years of minimizing his time outdoors, they had finally begun knowing Levi by his name and order. While it saved some time in the booze scented joint, it didn't save him from twenty minutes of a quivering ego, "They're reviewing the case," she continued, the harsh shut of a car door on her side almost blocking out the tense clench of air through her lungs.

"What?" he had planned to continue, but got distracted with something dancing downward through the air in his peripheral. An array of white flakes fell from the deep grey clouds blocking out the expected starry night. The weather hadn't mentioned snow, Levi thought. He glanced at his gloveless hands and passenger seat without a coat, and silently cursed himself. While his eyes focused away from the immediate white and toward something farther in the distance, he saw a family of four skipping down the sidewalk- no coats, no hats, and the father was even wearing a short-sleeved shirt. He would blame bad parenting, had the children not looked so impossibly content with the shavings of snow they were kicking from the cracks of concrete and onto their skin. His tires shredded against the asphalt as the diner came up at his right, pulling him into the available ten spaces of parking.

"Eren-" Levi yanked the phone away from his ear, shocked by the sudden rush of popping static. He cut the engine and glanced out toward the twirling ice- not enough to cut any phone line, "Do----T--Marco's----" Levi stepped out of his car, wincing as he strained his ears to make any sense out of the fuzzy threads of his cousin's voice. The static would be interrupted with violent pops, followed by waving silences, before picking back up with a second wave or a crackle of syllables. He gasped and backed up into the car's exterior, a sudden rush of cold taking by the revealed skin of his ankle, jolting up his spine until he was wrapping his arms around himself. The blanket of snow against the ground had built enough to steal his whole foot beneath the surface. He glanced back to the sky, watching as the number of droplets didn't increase, hadn't sped up, hadn't grown larger. He shut the door behind him, the sound echoing-bouncing off the diner and passing cars and the growing piles of snow leaning against parked cars across the street, "----help h--"

"Mikasa?" Levi asked, raising his voice as if it could help breach the static. He pulled the phone in front of him, seeing that the call was still going and the connection was strong. When he pulled the phone back to his ear, waddling through the growing mound of snow at his feet, the line had fallen into a near-silence. He listened to the speaker crackle as if someone was dragging their nails against it, focus shifting to the sudden explosion of snow. The amount sticking to his shoes didn't seem to increase, but the downpour from the sky had lifted. Roaring waves of snow pounded down in thick clumps, the smaller shards whipping around in the air before flying in various directions and out of sight, "Mikasa?" he tried again, swallowing thick as he stumbled forward, the ground beneath him dropping off onto a lower level. The air not distorted with grains of snow was shackled with a light grey layer of haze, blocking any real chance to gather his bearings or even understand which direction he was moving in. The dial tone of a lost connection flashed in his ear, keeping in perfect time with his stiff steps, "Mikasa?" he tried, one last time. Even after he realized there was no chance of a near-silence, he allowed the beeping tone to continue.

He glanced forward, squinting to glare through the pestering snow and forming wind. The spider webs of light rays snuck through the stained atmosphere, shining gold against the tides of silver. Levi thought, maybe, his mind had snapped between the time Mikasa called and he pulled into the parking lot- or maybe he had fallen asleep at his desk and hadn't even answered the phone. He thought this until he felt the caress of warmth against his shivering skin. Every thin sliver of glow that reached his body lit a needed warmth through him, making his spine tingle and the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. The phone, still pressed against his ear, flickered back to life-the sound of a rabbit-eared television sounding piercing his eardrums. The grew in diameter, spreading until Levi's entire body was covered in a layer of warmth against the cold world. He recognized, after blinking through the spots of purple burned into his retinas, that the light had an epicenter. It was circular, like the halo he was enveloped in, but much smaller, and bright white rather than a tamed yellow. He felt the rumble of snow rumble out of place, shaking his unstable feet. The phone connected with a pixelated ring, the sound of an outgoing call. He stepped forward, a tiny waddle forward, just enough to get a better glance at what the light was and where it might have been coming from. The other line had clicked with the lifting of the receiver, opening up a near-silence, "Mika-?" He stopped, eyes widening when the image of wide truck came into view. Its left light was shattered, out of use. Levi focused on the right side of the vehicle, backing away when he realized the shape of his light's center, rushing toward him faster than it had been before. He moved to duck out of the way, jumping out of the shackle of snow, hearing the truck blow its deafening whistle.

"Levi" a voice screamed, loud and desperate. It wasn't Mikasa. Levi didn't have a clue who it was. Before he could truly register what he had been hearing, a blow of metal hit his side.

He skidded through the tiny fragments of ice, grunting and going lax until he came to a stop. His hands immediately shot to his side, the joints of his fingers cracking in pain as they dug into his hip and ribs. But, as he landed, his hands shot to his forehead, rubbing against a circular spot of pain in the center. His side didn't even hurt. There wasn't any amount of pain- not even from the landing alone. His head was the only body part throbbing in the cold, even as he moved to rest on his knees. He felt the pain in his forehead dwindle after a few moments of pressing against it, the snow melting with his body heat and drenching his kneecaps in cold water.

Levi dropped his hands in front of his eyes, shocked to see a pair of dark blue, knitted mittens covering his previously icy fingers. The loose threads tickled and scratched at his wrists and palms, leaving tracks of irritation where he had rubbed against his head. Suddenly, he recognized all of it. He could feel a scarf rubbing the skin of his neck raw, bright red against the blue world. A beanie clung around his head, matting his damp, cold hair against his head so he could see the edges just reaching to the front of his eyes. He listened to the sound of rubber boots squeak when his feet twitched beneath him. He glanced at the dirt infused snow around him, ice crystals rather than freshly fallen. No storm whirled around him, and no gentle flakes drifted to the ground. The whole world had found itself still, the way it seemed to have been when the clouds had first rolled in. Behind him, there was no panic of a crowd rushing to help a man just hit by a truck. There weren't screams of horror or the driver calling out for help. When he turned around, the truck wasn't even there. The road wasn't even there. The only thing he found himself staring at where the shoe prints embedded into the crystals. They were small, compact, like a child's. And they lead right up to where he had fallen.

Behind him, he heard a whimper. Maybe his body had slammed into someone else when he ducked out of the way, or he had lost it and scared some innocent bystander taking a similar trip to a dingy diner. In front of him was a boy. He was wearing a military green sweater, the faded yellow stripe over the chest pulling apart and sewn back down. A pair of dark washed, denim overalls was the only thing he had been wearing over. They reached just above his kneecaps, allowing Levi to see his pale knees scraped, bruised, and dripping blood. Unmatching socks attempted to compensate for the exposed skin, straining to cover the boy's legs and failing to cover the obviously re-opened scabs. Brown boots, a size or two too large, shifted around his feet, the lace on his right shoe completely undone and frayed. His hands were visibly red against the off-white snow, throbbing with the lack of gloves. Off to the side was a blue and white beanie, with two long, braided sections of thread dangling from both sides, and a tattered pompom clinging to the top. Levi couldn't tell if he had a red blush decorating his cheeks, or if the cold had just burned this reaction into his skin. A messy mop of chocolate brown hair protruded in all directions, flying out wildly. It was kept just long enough to dangle toward his eyes, and curl away from the nape of his neck. A painfully plain bandage stuck over his left cheek, just below his eye. A twinkling pair of green eyes flashed, wet with tears and shining in the night. They looked almost frightened, darting all over the places that Levi wasn't taking up. They were the shade of a beautiful forest, tree leaves in the Fall-just before they change and fell to the ground, a shiny gem of nature. Despite his eyes dancing with fear, his expression was stoic. It looked like he had never moved a muscle in his face since he'd been born. His eyes...Levi tried to ignore them. He told himself he was just having traumatic flashback.

These eyes were a precious emerald and flashing with movement and life. They weren't screaming to the orange horizon in a cry for help, or splitting the blood splattered on his face with tears, or seemingly wrong on his form. Levi was at a loss for words, only realizing how frightened he must have looked when the boy finally made eye contact, and pulled away slightly.

Levi sucked in an icy breath, never breaking eye contact as his mouth grew dry and metallic. He knew this kid. He arguably knew him better than anyone had ever before. His image haunted his dreams and wrecked his future and shattered his memories. He hiccuped and felt bile rise in his throat, scrambling to his feet and noticing how he had notably shrunk several feet. He struggled to keep his balance as his whole body riddled with tremors. He took another shaking breath in, the boy's eyes hypnotizing him with their locked, intrigued gaze. He opened his mouth, meaning to let out a scream, but only managing a weak:

"Eren Yeager,"


	2. Chapter 2

"Levi!"

He jolted awake, sitting up and inevitably running his forehead into a homemade mobile, "You're going to make us late!" he pawed at the baby toy like a newborn kitten, testing out the reality of his surroundings. A thick ribbon, with the word 'Ackerman' scribbled into the fibers, dangled from five thumbtacks in the ceiling. The opposite end was tied and sloppily glued to two popsicle sticks, crossing over each other at the center to make a crooked addition symbol. Slivers of fishing wire dangled from each end of the sticks, with a longer wire hanging from the crossing point; tied at either end with the signature knot of a child. Six foam stars swayed in front of Levi's eyes, sprinkling glitter and chips of acrylic paint into his lap. The outer stars were yellow, orange, pink, and purple, each coated with glitter to match and plenty of empty space where once white foam could shine through. The two stars hanging from the center wire were blue and green, each having the opposite shade's glitter over them, so they almost glimmered a distant hue of turquoise. Over each knot was a messy blob of dried glue, and scotch tape in certain areas. The thing was just waiting to fall apart. But, it hadn't yet.

Levi figured he would have made something of a mediocre arts-and-crafts project and allowed it to hover over his dreams at night until fragments of glitter stuck to his eyelids. What he didn't figure was that he didn't actually mind the sparkling mess in his lap. The mix of yellow and orange and pink and so on was actually a pleasant sight to wake up to...

"Levi?" he blinked, finally turning his head away from the mobile and toward the voice. There she was, standing at the second rung of his top-bunk ladder. Her hair was the same jet-black as it always had been, only long enough to cover her shoulders. It was tied half-up half-down, a blue scrunchie holding the "half-up" section right in the center of her head. A pink sweatshirt was shoved under her baggy dungarees, completed by new white Keds she had probably just received. She looked much younger than ten, but that was who she was. Was.

"Sorry, Mikasa," he mumbled, still testing the pre-pubescent squeak of his vocal chords. As his cousin slid down the ladder and out of their shared bedroom, Levi begrudgingly moved the wrinkled duvet away from his body. He noticed his bedsheets. Under the frozen layer of crackling glitter, there was a worn down quilt of baby blue and navy, patched with colourful fish so it looked like they were swimming through a waving ocean current. Posters lined the walls around him, album covers and sports heroes of a forgotten time, laying purposely crooked over his thin frame of exposed wall. The room outside the bed area was decorated in stickers, sports gear, and a whole corner dedicated to a boombox and a mountain of CD's. The furniture was a genderless white, excluding the bed frame, which was fire truck red. He yawned, his childhood body not used to being woken up at such early hours, and threw his body weight over the side of the bunk bed. He must have done this often, because he didn't so much as stumble when he hit the ground.

He was face to face with Mikasa's bed then. At this point in time, she was making the bold choice of changing her favourite colour from purple to pink-so the whole spread looked like something out of Barbie's dream house. Purple pillows and pink sheets with too many stuffed animals to count. The whole image brought a bittersweet smile to his face. At one point, his cousin had been more of a princess than a peasant. He couldn't quite recall when all that changed.

_Levi didn't notice her when he threw the first punch. Any sound of shock Mikasa might have made was masked with the cracking of his knuckles against Eren's cheek. He had hit the boy so hard, Eren cut clean through the pile of snow and smacked into the concrete sidewalk below. The air was filled with the choked gasps and moans of the brunette having the air knocked out of him. Even though his body was reacting like it was terrified of the surprise suffocation, Eren's eyes didn't tremble. He seemed to just curl into the fetal position like it was instinctual, attempting to breathe in and out as evenly as possible despite the way his chest and diaphragm had different plans. The calm absolutely sickened Levi, seeing Eren might as well have been digging his fifteen year old skeleton out of the dirt and throwing it in his face. He didn't know whether it was anger or panic that made him straddle over the younger boy and hit him over and over until his right hand started throbbing. Eren's cheek was bright red, but he wasn't bleeding, and Levi couldn't help but curse his child-like strength for ruining his one chance to beat the bastard senseless. He didn't even realize he was screaming until he sucked in a breath of Winter air that seemed to pour salt into his torn throat._

_Then, there was Mikasa, steady eyed and too strong for a ten year old girl. With one push of her hands, both Levi and Eren were on their backs, separated, and struggling for breath. Levi sat back up as soon as the icy shards on the floor burned through his clothes and dampened his skin. He was ready to scream again, but was put into a state of shock when he saw Mikasa. He must have looked terrified, because Mikasa had run over to check on him rather than the boy he had just beaten for, seemingly, no reason. She must have been saying something- whether it be if he was okay or he had gone insane. However, Levi wasn't focussing on her._

_He kept his eyes locked on Eren, who pushed himself to his knees like a broken doll. His motions seemed twitchy and stiff like his joints had been locked in place. The little puddle of blood coming from his mouth, from where his teeth had torn at the walls of his cheek were meant to feel like a victory to the older boy. But, all he could focus on was the screaming bruise shining from Eren's collar bone. The cold air was making it worse than it was, but it was one of the most disgusting minor injuries Levi had seen in his twenty-six years. The skin around the mark was a pulsating pink, making the transition from Eren's darker skin tone to the grotesque galaxy of red and purple that swirled around in their own private nebula. It was the proof that someone had been in a serious accident, a car collision or a freshly broken bone. Levi winced and almost covered his own chest when the thought of clothing scraping against the sensitive skin crossed his mind. He could take credit all he wanted for the inevitable bruise that was already brewing on Eren Yeager's left cheek. But, he couldn't steal any glory from any wounds from the neck down._

_"How'd you get that bruise on your chest?" Levi had asked, completely stupid and not sure why he cared. Mikasa whirled around to look at Eren, whose eyes were finally filled with a glimmer of actual fear. The brunette opened his mouth to say something, his heavy breaths coming out in smoking white puffs in the air. Just as soon as it had come, the terror had gone, and he was looking like the fight hadn't even happened. He wasn't sure if a child like Mikasa could catch something like that, but a peculiar case like Levi definitely could._

_"...Fell down the stairs..." Eren spoke just above a mumble. And Levi didn't mean to, but his heart stuttered. He hadn't heard Eren Yeager speak ever, and at some points wondered if he could even speak to begin with. It was kind of like hearing a baby laugh for the first time, completely expected yet still delightful to the ears._

_With Levi and Mikasa both stunned into slack-jawed silence, Eren wiped the stray clumps of snow away from himself, retrieved his almost completely buried hat, and was half-way down the street before anyone could blink an eye._

"Hey, Honey, hurry up and eat! Isabel and Farlan will be here soon!" a woman's voice echoed through the open layout of the house. Though it was followed by several layerings of itself, the main vocal point sent chills down Levi's spine. The sound was sweet and kind and bright enough to stop time and end the world's ailments. The words coiled around Levi's body, warming him up and numbing the dull pain still prickling at the knuckles of his right hand. His eyes glassed over with a thin layer of tears when he turned the sentence over in his mind. He couldn't recall hearing the phrase in his distant memories, but the tone of the voice and the hitch of the syllables struck a tone of familiarity. Without forcing himself, his body burst through the door, not bothering to close it behind him. His socks slid against the hardwood flooring, sending Levi sliding down the hallway and in the door frame of the bathroom at the opposing end. He struggled to gain momentum going forward toward the kitchen. His body continued to rush, only being forced to a stop when the traction of his sliding feet changed from wood to stone tile. Just as fast as his mind and body had been racing, he crashed to his hands and knees just next to the bar where Mikasa was eating breakfast. Levi heard his cousin fight a giggle into her hand, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, where's the fire?" the same sweet, kind, bright voice spoke, obviously attempting to stifle a laugh herself.

Levi's gaze shot up, mouth hung open at his mother reaching a hand out to him. She looked ridiculous with her raven hair curled in thick ringlets and teased until it spread around the whole of her shoulders and gave her a probable two inches. She wore a light wash jeans, slightly too baggy and reaching toward the pinch of her waist, held together with a brown, leather belt. Her faded yellow t-shirt had a chipped Pepsi logo surrounded by stains that looked like orange juice and chocolate. She didn't wear a drop of makeup and yet she still absolutely glowed in the morning light breaking through the frosted window. There was a distant longing he was sure his current body couldn't understand, the sense that his young mother was the greatest thing he'd ever seen. He took her offered hand and they worked together to pull him to his feet, "Mom..." Levi gaped. For only a second, the idea of throwing his arms around her passed through his thoughts. Like sprinting down the hallway, he hadn't meant to, but his arms found their way around her waist and his face managed to nuzzle into her floral scented shirt.

"And a good morning to you," Kuchel cooed, reciprocating the hug and placed a quick kiss to the top of Levi's head. Everything he had been wondering, any anxiety laced questions that might have clouded his memory the previous night faded into the background for a moment, "You okay there, Champ?" Kuchel asked, though she didn't pull away, so Levi kept holding on. He could be dead, laying in the middle of the street with shattered bones, a petrified truck driver, and a couple with two children screaming to the 9-1-1 operator. This could be the last seven minutes of his brain working in dying overdrive. Or maybe he was already gone and this was his divine punishment. Or somehow, he had found a way to travel through time and he was actually standing in a situation that should only exist in his memory- however, at this exact moment, he didn't care. It was him and his mom, with Mikasa blinking at the pair from the corner, before everything had gone wrong, "Ah, you're eleven now,"-wait-"so big!"-he was-"You won't want hugs like this for much longer!"-that meant-"I wish I could keep you little forever!" Kuchel sounded breathless as her son absentmindedly squeezed her tighter. She smiled at the loving affection, not being able to see the panic racing in Levi's eyes.

Eleven. He was eleven. And that meant-

"Levi got into a fight last night!" Mikasa chirped, placing her crumb covered plate into the sink. She had a second plate in her opposite hand, a buttered slice of toast for Levi rested on top.

"You did what?" Kuchel snapped, breaking the hug but keeping her hands on Levi's shoulders. Her kind face took on an expression that was much more notable to the Ackerman family-stern and demanding. Levi attempted to stutter out an answer, mouth suddenly dry and his bruised knuckles throbbing beneath his flannel.

"Yo! Levi, Mikasa!" a girl's voice sounded from somewhere in the front lawn. Mikasa pulled her cousin by his twitching hands, shoving the slice of toast in his mouth and rushing over to their backpacks resting by the front door.

"We're talking about this later, young man," Kuchel crossed her arms, voice still stern but laced with as much love as Levi ever knew.

"Y-yeah," he mumbled. Eleven.

He remembered Isabel Magnolia and Farlan Church. They had been the first friends Levi had ever made outside of Mikasa. Isabel was a firecracker constantly going off, the picture of a child hyped on attention and pixie stix. Sometime in second grade, she had tackled Levi to the ground during a game of flag football, and the rest seemed to be history. She had wild red hair yanked and tugged until she managed to create small pigtails, one higher than the other on her head. Her eyes were light green orbs of gunpowder and manic excitement, and were either mischievously enticing or full of mind numbing peer pressure. At one point, she wore dresses and skirts, but ended up dressing like a female version of Levi somewhere along the line. If Isabel was chaos, Farlan was peace. He was the appointed leader in a three person group project in third grade, and had stuck like glue since. He had dirty blonde hair somewhat glued back in a hope to look sleek, blue eyes full of calm and always trained on Isabel and Levi's backs, and a strange idea that sweatshirts and pants with matching colours and patterns were acceptable.

"You got into a fight with Eren Yeager?!" Isabel gasped, hands clinging tight to her backpack straps. Mikasa couldn't seem to resist sharing the details as the four walked down the sidewalk toward a new neighbourhood. Levi kept his eyes down to his feet as he listened to his cousin twist the story so that Eren had tried to hit him first, instead of making it out to be the vicious attack that it was.

The morning routine seemed to go as such: Isabel and Farlan only lived four houses away from one another, so they would meet up first before beginning the walk toward Mikasa and Levi's house, the four of them would then walk the five minutes to Jean's house, two doors down to Marco, and then fifteen minutes to Armin's house before making it to school. It seemed like a lot of distance for kids who could leave later had they all walked separately, but Levi figured he just might not understand the logic in it anymore.

"I had to break them up and everything! Levi could have killed him!" Mikasa cheered, throwing a punch to the open air.

"Don't say that..." Levi murmured just above a whisper. She continued speaking anyway, using bold hand motions and different pitches of her voice to add to the conversation. He kicked a rock in front of him, keeping his eyes on it so it never drifted too far, and he always had the opportunity to kick it once again. Isabel, Farlan, and Mikasa continued to talk about the event in exaggerated details and broken information. It was like watching a game of telephone happen right in front of him, except everyone was purposely twisting the words until the story was nothing like it had been at the beginning. Their incessant chatting was annoying background noise somewhere far away, and lingered even as they crossed the street into Jean and Marco's neighbourhood.

Without his mother's arms to keep him safe, the dark thoughts came flooding around him again. Option one: a dream or a final memory. That seemed to make the most sense with the idea of a truck shattering the bones in his side. Lying in the snow with his body panicking at the sensation of losing itself, his mind might have transported him to the last time in his life he could remember being content with something handed to him. But, he knew for a fact he had never heard Eren speak and he would have never laid a hand on him- so a review of his past memories was out of the question. And, his right hand had been burning with a dull pain the entire night-a pain that couldn't be experienced without having a conscious connection to his brain. So, a dream didn't seem like an option either. If God did exist, and he was behind this by sending Levi's spirit into a disgusting purgatory of his worst nightmare, he was pulling a dick move. If anything, the guy owed Levi some sort of paradise for putting him through it the first time. The last option, and the most unbelievable, was the option that he had found a way to go back in time. He sounded and looked like a child, his body reacted to his thoughts and ideas like a child, his friends spoke in ways an adult Levi would never think up, everything seemed real and moving like life would. But, if he had actually discovered something people had only dreamed of doing...How? How exactly was it triggered? And why? Why now? Why 1993?

"You okay, Lev?" Marco asked beneath the noise of the now four people screaming about fights and Eren Yeager. Levi blinked out of his daze to notice the rock has disappeared, and he and Marco were left walking behind Isabel, Mikasa, Farlan, and Jean, "You're pretty quiet today,"

Marco was tall for his age, standing several inches taller than the others in the small huddle. He had short, black hair that stuck up in weird areas, and freckles spotted the pale, puffy cheeks below his brown eyes. To be honest, there weren't many adjectives Levi could remember to describe him. He and Jean were more Mikasa's friends than his, and he had only known him on a more personal level for about two years before he met the same fate as Eren. Levi never saw his corpse, but watching someone who's supposed to be six feet under still ran a shiver down his spine. From what he could gather, the kid was nice at the very least, "What's the date today?"

"Monday, January 4th!" Jean had turned away from the other conversation, which seemed to have drifted from the topic of Levi's "heroic" deed, and drifted to what their vacation time had been like, "First day back at prison," he joked, chuckling at his joke while no one else did before turning back to the others. Jean's hair was an unkempt nest of ashy-brown hair, covering his entire head instead of the undercut he would be sporting from age fifteen and on. His amber eyes were brighter than Levi ever remembered seeing them, but he could only imagine what the murder of his best friend would do to those friendly orbs. This version of Levi would have known Jean since first grade, when both got involved in the community field hockey team, but would only have hung around him when Mikasa connected the two in the middle of second grade. He was sarcastic and bubbly back then or...now. Was.

January 4th, "I'm fine," Levi nodded toward Marco, mustering up as big of a smile as he could, which meant it was hardly there at all. Levi reached back in his memory: the countless newspaper clippings he collected and hoarded until his mother tore them away, turning on the TV to watch droplets of information slide over his own face staring down and ocean of press. Eren Yeager would fail to come to school any day a week from now. He would be tortured and murdered sometime during the nights of either the 13th or the 14th. His body would be found the 16th. The press would go crazy and point fingers at Grisha Yeager, gathering evidence but never discovering a motive. Mid April, Marco Bott's body would be found. Grisha would be tried and convicted two years later, but it would bring no peace to anyone, and no one would believe in the idea of safety any longer. Levi's life would be ruined. He clenched his fists, wincing at the skin pulling around his knuckles. He felt his stomach do a flip at the thought of every event unfolding again, the burning acid of adrenaline building up and threatening to explode.

The group had stopped in front of what Levi could only guess was Armin's childhood house, covering their ears as Isabel screamed for the boy to hurry up and come outside. The blonde eventually poked his head out, infamous blonde bowl cut reaching just above his sensitive blue eyes. At this point in time, Armin was a nobody-a kid you bumped into on the playground and you never thought twice. He was scrawny, no taller than Isabel, and had the emotional strength of a deer caught in headlights. His shyness was masked by the extroverted nature of Jean and Isabel, and comforted by a more understanding Marco and Farlan. People believed they needed to take care of him or he might shatter before them- not knowing that he would, apparently, be entering law school while some of them were working at tax firms. Behind those skittish eyes and childish innocence was someone fearless.

He stumbled down the cement steps of his front porch, greeting everyone as they started down the street again, toward the school yard. Mikasa went on to bring up the night's events to Armin, who seemed more concerned than the others had thought to be. No one else was paying attention, or they just didn't care, but Levi saw.

Two houses down from Armin's home, Eren was shutting the front door to his own home. He took extra time to lock it, signaling that he was the last one home and he would be for some time. He was dressed in black this time, successfully muting himself into the background of an era that still lingered on the idea of neon and overlapping triangle patterns. He turned away from the door, shoving the key into the taped together creation he passed for a backpack, stopping in his tracks when he looked out over the bushes of his front lawn and locked eyes with Levi. The bruise on Eren's cheek was much lighter than anticipated, a gentle violet flower blooming just over the lift of his cheek bone. But, if it was anything like the feeling in Levi's hand, it was throbbing no matter how underwhelming it looked. It probably couldn't match the mess that was painted onto his collar bone...

"Levi!" Isabel yelled, waiting the few seconds it took for Levi to actually drag his eyes away from Eren. The group had already crossed the street, and were looking back at him with either concerned expressions or glinting irises.

Without thinking, he stumbled forward without looking back at Eren. He caught up to the group, brushing off the insane ideas that he was threatening anyone or vice versa. His mouth moved whenever someone spoke to him the rest of the walk to school, but only one thought seemed to invade his thoughts above all else.

Eren lived in a one story house.

* * *

 

"Th-that can't be true, right?" she asked, leaning over Eren's desk with a concerned expression.

Petra Ral was, arguably, the prettiest girl of the fifth grade class. She had short, strawberry blonde hair that she didn't seem to bother trying anything special with. It hugged the sides of her cheeks and sported a neon green butterfly clip to keep her bangs out of her face. Her eyes were a fairly bright shade of amber, looking strikingly yellow when they twinkled in the light filtering in from the windows. At one point, Levi was sure he had a crush on her out of pure obligation. Everyone else liked her; why not him?

Levi, apparently, sat in the third row and second column on the classroom: Farlan to his left, Isabel in front, Mikasa behind, and Eren to his right. The laminated nameplates with personalized, sloppy handwriting was the only thing that saved Levi from staring into the room like a lunatic. He sat down, mind exhausted but still racing, while the rest of the group scattered to other cliques Levi hardly remembered. Mikasa scrambled to Annie Leonhart, Jean and Marco waved down Connie Springer, Isabel and Farlan screamed at Historia Reiss, and Armin settled for any other floaters in the room who hung out together solely because growing up social was cut-throat. By the time Levi had scooted his chair in, testing the feeling of his toes barely scraping the floor, the news had spread: Mikasa and Levi were walking home last night when Eren started threatening them and throwing punches, and he wouldn't stop until Levi knocked him out with one good swing to the face. The whole thing seemed impossible-Eren didn't even answer questions, let alone use his voice to do harm. And, if anyone had taken a moment to check the severity of the bruises on either boy, they would have been able to figure out what had actually happened. But, this wasn't the sort of age where people looked at clues and context to find an answer, they were content believing whatever sounded more like a comic book. And whatever made Eren Yeager seem unfathomable.

As soon as Eren had wandered into the room, taking a seat beside Levi without making eye contact with anyone, Petra had been on his case about the events that unfolded. While it seemed like she was still fighting for the side that believed the lie, at least she was making an effort to get some information from the 'guilty' party. No matter how hard he tried, Levi couldn't remember Eren talking to anyone. Though, _Eren_ wasn't doing any of the talking, just staring at Petra with a hand trying to cover the bruise on his cheek and eyes that begged for the room to go silent. Petra stayed long enough to have a sort of conversation of their own. He remained silent, she continued prodding.

His fifth grade classroom had been the most important one of his life, and yet he'd forgotten so much about it. He forgot that the teacher, who they were instructed to address as 'Hange' to make the environment more "friendly", had been a step away from a psychotic outburst. In the book shelf against the back wall, closest to the backpack hooks, there were books that wouldn't make any sense to ten year olds: _The Scarlet Letter, A Brave New World, Lord of the Flies, Huck Finn, The Outsiders, The Diary of a Young Girl,_ and thousands of high school textbooks that he recalled seeing snapshots of in the online version of the courses. In other shelves there were the class sets of books more appropriate to the age group, and art projects from classes of years before: a clay cat painted yellow and missing the left paw, a mason jar filled with water and turned upside-down as a makeshift, Halloween snowglobe, a marble painted canvas with choppy paper snowflakes glued on the surface. Atop the large case were three globes, each one adding smaller and smaller details until the world just seemed too crowded. There was a metal desk, like any other classroom, though this one was covered in stickers and doodled on post-it notes. The chalk waiting in the tin under the blackboard had equal hues of the rainbow to average white, as well as a small stuffed frog just about to fall off the edge in the corner. The walls were covered in essays and poems and other english projects, at least one belonging to every student. A tree made out of crumpled tissue paper and mountains of glue dangled over the doorway, paper apples dangling from the tips of the marked outline. He imagined the beginning of the year-they must have worked together for days to make sure it was complete.

"Hey, Levi," a slightly larger boy stood in front of Levi's desk, hands on his hips and looking more like a middle schooler. He had ashen blonde hair, either cut very close to the scalp or grown out from a military style shave. His eyes could have been brown or hazel, but they were small either way and didn't have a chance to stand out against the other already defined facial features. He wore a Carhartt jacket, buttoned up so the only other piece seen was a white shell necklace, and camouflage pants. If he had to guess, this was Reiner Braun. Levi was years older than this kid, and yet still leaned back in his seat due to trace amounts of intimidation, "Is it true Yeager was gonna hit your cousin?" Reiner wrapped his hands around either side of Levi's desk, like he was setting up two walls to make the conversation private.

Suddenly, the noise of the room filled his ears. How long would people talk about something so meaningless? 'He's like a madman!' Sasha Blouse screeched, 'That's so scary, how do you deal with that?' Mina Carolina shivered, 'Levi's pretty strong' Thomas Wagner sounded once Petra started toying around with the whisper game herself. Levi tried to shake away the noise as he glanced around Reiner's arm and toward Eren. The brunette was staring forward, toward the desk with no teacher, eyes vacant like he was deaf to the world around him. The slight clench in the back of his jaw was enough to know he was hearing every word.

"Why don't you ask Eren?" Levi spat an emphasis on the name, not quite sure why his teeth began grinding over each other. He glanced toward Eren again, the green eyes looking back at him now. It was pitiful the way the brunette was keeping silent, despite having the opportunity to set the record straight right in front of him. Levi felt an unexplained, boiling sensation form toward the back of his mouth as he scanned the room. Every child sat in huddles talking about shit they didn't know. Every kid had smiles on their faces while they created the perfect villain. Even Mikasa was laughing with Jean and Armin as if her newfound popularity was something to be proud of. Reiner remained looking down at Levi, eyes polite and curious, oblivious to what was really going on. Levi dug his dull fingernails into his jeans, trying to listen to the scraping of the fabric rather than the rumour-but nothing could drown it out. They had it all wrong. Eren did nothing wrong. Eren never did anything wrong. Levi couldn't explain it, but part of him felt like crying and the other was ready to scream. Eren wouldn't stand up for himself. He would let people keep lying. He would allow himself to get dragged through the dirt.

Levi wouldn't.

He slammed his hands down on his desk, standing so fast that his plastic chair bounced against the carpet and into the legs of Mikasa's desk, "Hey," he tried, voice unable to break the roar of the room, "Shut up!" he screamed, not bothering to look away from Reiner as all eyes fell on him, an audience of twenty with their mouths hanging open in surprise, "I hit him first. I beat the living shit out of Eren for no reason. He sat there and took it until Mikasa broke it up. If any of you used your brains for something more than childish bullshit, you might have a clue that I'm not your fucking hero. So, let's pull our heads out of our asses and get along like the high and mighty angels we all pretend to be," he spoke in lifeless monotone, not fully aware of why he was so angry or why he was speaking, but knowing it was too late. The room remained silent, everyone looking almost frightened to even glance at the person next to them for answers. Levi sighed, his child body suddenly out of anger, and glanced to Eren-who was fully turned toward Levi now, with eyes that glimmered with more appreciation than fear, "I'll be the first to say it," he continued, stealing the collective's attention for the second time, "I'm sorry, Eren,"

With that, Levi picked up his chair, sat back in his seat, and waited for Hange to come.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author-chan apologizes for being awful and having writer's block for two months. Burn me at the stake if I do it again.  
> -M.


	3. Chapter 3

That heavenly bliss of the classroom stunned to silence only lasted a moment before shattering and effectively breaking the sound barrier.

Hange had entered the room, balancing a coffee cup, a thick stack of lined papers marked in childish chicken scratch, and a very empty looking briefcase between two hands. They babbled a somewhat apology for being late, and murmured something similar to an appropriate excuse for being so, before finally glancing up to the eighteen gaping mouths of students spread throughout the room. Objects were set in a piled disaster area on a desk and seconds ticked by with nothing but the click of a clock-hand. If the silence had hung long enough, the signature sound of a half empty, thick papered coffee cup scraping against a hard surface would have echoed into the neighbouring classroom and back. However, before Hange could even gather their own personal order, noise the volume of spinning helicopter blades erupted.

_"Levi said the F-word!" "He hit Eren!" "Ackerman told us to shut up!" "He-"_

There was a half-hearted attempt to calm the room by raising both hands in the air as though pleading innocence, but Hange's attention was completely on Levi. The teacher's face scrambled into a complex mix of confusion and misunderstanding, squinting and raking their eyes over Levi's small form just to check it wasn't some sort of caffeine induced mirage. Levi kept his face as stoic as possible, lazily blinking in response to the accusations and fingers pointing his way. He was a grown man, none the less  he had also been a child once. He remembered how sadistic and eager other children were to watch one of their own get punished or twitch with hot embarrassment that they got caught in the act. He was willing to take whatever punishment his outburst entailed, but he wouldn't allow the shrieking brats sitting around him the satisfaction of seeing him flinch under an authoritative gaze. As hard as he willed his mind not to falter, his childlike instincts eventually tore the blank expression from the face of his teacher and down to his lap.

The menacing chorus of 'oooh's were expected and yet the boy still felt his very core light up with red-hot shame. It was ruled that Levi Ackerman would not be attending an average recess for the day, instead he’d be attending a closed hearing to discuss his actions.

And that was how he ended up sitting on his fifth grade teacher's desk with a cup of instant noodles heating his hands while the sporadic screams and laughter from his peers swirled just outside.

"Look, I get it if you didn't like it-the book is a total snooze fest if you're not into it," Hange's energetic voice left a ringing in Levi's ears as they plucked the thin copy of _A Brave New World_ from his open backpack. If kids had the capacity to pay proper attention, they would've known that Levi had spent plenty of his lunches and recesses inside with his peculiar teacher, swapping books or getting extra english lessons. The way he remembered, the two had near friendly conversations, "Which I shouldn't say since I'm your teacher and supposed to  'inspire the youth to learn' and what not-" Hange walked to the bookshelf in the back of the classroom, taking a different book from the huddle and replacing it with Levi's latest return. He imagined how avoiding the subject of misdemeanors must have been comforting as a child, but now just seemed like worthless misleading calm before an erupting storm. Idle chatter before loaded discussions was a method to break down barriers and make both parties feel more at ease, the sharing of interests was a reminder that the area was safe and no bonds would be broken, the eager voice and prancing steps back through the rows of students was an attempt at comedic relief of tension.

The teacher Levi might have once looked up to as cool and entertaining was nothing more than a robotic mold of every other human being around, "but if Huxley didn't satisfy, Golding is definitely your guy!" Hange bounced until they were back to the front desk, a slightly tattered copy of William Golding's _Lord of the Flies_ in hand. Levi swirled a spoon through the clouded broth drowning the lukewarm noodles, "I mean-technically-you're not supposed to be reading these 'til high school, so I am inspiring you to learn young so pats on the back to me-"

"Um...Are we not going to talk about how I cussed the room out? Or beat up my classmate?" he blurted, not willing to listen to anymore idle chatter.

"We could talk about either. It's your choice," Hange's voice had calmed to a more parental tone, full of care and understanding but a slight edge to ease a conversation forward. They set the book, face down, on the table, sliding it until it was pressed up against Levi's thigh. It was almost like a peace-offering or a truce flag-something meant to signal compromise and truthful confessions. Had Levi been the age he appeared, he might have fallen for it.

"I'll pass," he responded instead, taking the book and pushing it off the table and into the gaping mouth of his backpack.

"Okay, I lied. Totally not your choice," the soft nature of Hange's face and voice shifted as their student shoved a spoonful of ramen into his smug face, "We can-will-start with why exactly you hit Eren?" Levi frowned and slurped the shrimp flavoured broth out of the base of the spoon, "This isn't like you, Levi. You've never done anything like this before,"

Names. Calling someone by their name adds an extra weight of connection, and therefore guilt, onto someone. Adding the bullet points of behavioural changes sends the mind whirling in an attempt to recognize changes in patterns, forcing the guilty party to examine their own actions bit by bit and thus locate the problem on their own. Avoiding smug or confident expressions ruins a sense of achievement. His mind drifted in wondering whether or not he and his teacher had ever had a meaningful conversation. To a child, these vocal cues and subtle body language would form a bubble of love and safety. They would mean everything to a brat who hadn't grown enough to understand how everyone shared these similar patterns and inflections. To Hange, sitting down with an eleven year old boy, talking about books he could hardly understand, asking about words he wouldn't use, they were probably some of the worse hours of their life. If not the worst, at least some of the most useless. How well could anyone know anyone else when their minds are in two separate stages of development and instincts?

"I won't tell your mother about this," the teacher finally drawled after several beats of silence. Levi paused, setting down the filled cup of noodles atop the desk. There were two routes this sentence could drift down. One: the chance of afterschool repercussions vanishes and creates a renewed sense of safety, Levi's guard drops, and he shares the whole story from start to finish. Two: Hange finds the task of trying to break him tiring and is fully trying to move on. If curiosity and morals stand strong, the former is the more possible of the two paths.

"You're completely transparent," Levi blurted, not able to stop the thought before they shifted into words. He slapped a hand over his mouth, almost as if his palm could catch the air before any sound cut through. He jerked toward his teacher, his childish instincts realizing that he was digging himself a deeper grave each second his ass stayed in the classroom. And though he didn't have any tighter grasp on what was going on or what this 'time' was, the recurring dread of punishment or fear of causing harm to something still flexible as his own actions made his stomach tighten and shift. Imagine reality modifying itself-waiting for every step you take, or any answer you choose-crumbling at the click of your heals and reminding you of the blame before you have time to recognize the choice. Something about it felt real, "I didn't-uh-"

"No, you did," Hange let out a loud cackle, frightening Levi in a much different way than before, "I'm getting so old...that took me by surprise," they were still chuckling, shoulders twitching and voice hitching. Levi might have scooted farther away if the soup weren't in his way, "Kids always surprise me! You think they're one way, but they're actually on the complete opposite of the spectrum," My teacher is actually insane, Levi thought, suddenly wondering if his mind had blocked out more traumatic recess memories, "So, surprise me again. What exactly makes you guys dislike Eren so much?"

He opened his mouth to say something, like he had a prearranged list of complaints against the boy and this psychopathic education officer was just another gossiping schoolyard freakshow. But-a word he had been using a lot lately-he couldn't recall any real reasons his classroom had collectively made the decision. As the air dried out his tongue, he wondered if there was _ever_ a list of reasons to hate anyone when you'd never talked to them. Eren was quiet and spineless: not exactly reasons for unparalleled loathing. Other than those two traits, no one else really knew what other qualities made him up. He wasn't physically disabled or a bumbling idiot, so kids couldn't be mindlessly cruel about irreversible or bothersome mishaps. From outward perspectives, he was the type of kid every parent or teacher wanted their own demon spawn to be around.

Levi sat there, mouth agape and drying out as his teacher stared at him with with pitying eyes and a knowing smile.

Before he could think of an actual answer, the bell rang.

In twenty-six years, Levi couldn't remember a time he had a conversation so profound and meaningless at the same time.

He slid off the desk, choking back a gasp when it took more suspended air time before hitting the ground. The frayed copy of _Lord of the Flies_ sat just at the rim of his bag, half of it balancing on a sticker-coated binder tottering back and forth and half of it floating on a soft pillow of exterior canvas. He took the book in his hand, cradling the spine between his index finger and thumb, eyes scanning up and down at the lackluster, grey cover. He had remembered reading it once before-more than likely under similar circumstances to how he found it in his hands today-but he wasn't sure if he had fully grasped the story. There was plenty of death and gore and screaming twelve year olds, but power struggles and human behavioural commentary were probably subjects that had flown right over his head the first go around. Reading it again by the time he reached his equivalent to high school, he could agree with Hange completely. If you don't like Huxley, you'll more than likely fall for Golding.

Levi hadn't realized his body had moved on autopilot in picking up his bag and new book and dragging  his feet back to his assigned desk. Only when the book tumbled out of his grip by some unknown force did his eyes adjust to the different surroundings. He watched the book clatter to the floor, bouncing on the upper left corner to the bottom right before flipping against the spine and to a halt. He wasn't a firm follower of any religion or universe shattering belief, but he knew exactly who had bumped into him before he tore his gaze from the ground-whether it be by recently developed psychic powers or God's twisted definition of the word 'fate'. Eren squatted to the ground, face calm as ever but actions shaky and flustered, chasing after the book and checking for any surface injuries. He watched with dainty curiosity as the brunette checked the novel at every angle, hands trembling so terribly he nearly sent the book clattering to the floor again.

It was like watching a kicked puppy meekly return to the side of its assailant-which was more or less the current situation. Eren sat, propped up on his knees, flipping the book over and over with calculating eyes checking every corner, every page, any possible dents in the fragile spine. When the brunette had twisted the book in his hands for two rotations, Levi realized he wasn't planning on making it back to his own two feet. Playing the role of the guilty assailant, Levi drifted to his knees, propped up so he was on the same level as the boy on the floor. Eren's gaze lingered on the thin pages of the book for only a moment longer before shifting their focus to the boy across from him, simply taking in the imagery of the fellow lunatic sprawled across the dirty floor. Green eyes flickered down to the individual bruises brushing the knuckles of Levi's right hand, while Levi's own gaze was fixated on the matching charm across Eren's left cheek. For a moment, both boys had an entire conversation with one exhaling breath, taking a moment to bring clarity about their own eyes before glancing into each other's. Both wore the same calm features on their expressions, despite a lukewarm feeling of bubbling nerves taking hold of everywhere their faces couldn't hide.

"Sorry," Eren muttered, steadying the book in his hands before extended it out in front of him and toward Levi. His hands still shook, but the earthquake had subsided.

Levi grasped either side of the book with both hands, carefully placing them so none of his fingers wrapped over Eren's. The stuffy air around them was filled with a pounding mix of screaming tensions and silent calm, and one slip of contact could send them reeling backward into the events of the night prior. _Lord of the Flies_ managed a safe transition back to Levi's possession, eye contact never breaking throughout the prolonged journey.

The brunette was the first to stand, pushing himself back to his feet and checking his knees for any damage that might have been done. As Levi followed suit, he figured he might have to change his scale on what made a conversation both profound and meaningless at the same time.

Eren slipped into his seat, the first one to sit down as other students slowly filled the room and wagged off to whoever they had linked arms with on their way through the door. Levi lifted his bag and tucked Golding safely inside, zipping up the thing before it could create more chaos. His eyes were set on the hooks across the room, the other student's backpacks bumping against one another in a never ending territorial war. But-following the pattern that would likely be a set rule in whatever this world was-his body acted on instinct and spun back around to face Eren. He wasn't phased when he noticed the green eyes quickly shift away from him as he spun around, darting straight ahead to look at the blackboard.

"I'm sorry," Levi stated, voice kept low and steady in case anyone thought to make a mess out of him simply speaking to the boy, "For hitting you last night and for not stopping Mikasa and everyone sooner when they started spreading lies around," When Eren turned back to face him, it was Levi's turn to coyly look away. By childish or grown instincts, he could no longer tell, "Sorry," he turned back to the bag resting atop his desk, fiddling with the zipper one last time in preparation for the move.

"You said sorry earlier, too," Levi practically jumped when Eren piped up and continued the conversation. Back when the brunette was alive-if that was even the correct way to phrase it anymore-he didn't speak so much as a word, something Levi even brought up when initially questioned by the police.None the less, here he was, reliving or remembering or rewriting the details of history and having staccato beats of timid conversation with the childhood catalyst of his shattered life. Each word was exploratory on both ends; Eren's mousy voice laced with hesitance at each beat and Levi anxious at listening to any word. He chalked it up to the resounding knowledge he was chatting with a dead man and only that reason was what made a thin layer of nervous sweat coat his palms.

"I meant it then, too," he answered, forgoing his backpack and turning around to face the other properly. Levi didn't miss how Eren's green eyes shot away from looking at him and toward the front of the room. He just didn't say anything.

"You got in trouble for me," the brunette shot back, guilty conscious replacing the previous hesitance. Why did anyone actually hate this kid? His father was a doctor, so it wasn't a lack of money that made others look down on him, or poor social standing. As far as kids go he was as cute as any other, made even more charming by the seemingly mature sense of decorum and manners. The prettiest girl in the class, arguably, could stand talking to him. She didn't seem psychopathic either, so having one sided conversations like that of today was more than likely a screw up. The only reasons that sat at the tip of his tongue were the most superficial bullet points: he was quiet, he was distant, and he was an easy target. Levi could say it now-high on a superiority complex and a mentally grown-up pedestal-that kids get bored and long for something to tease and taunt. Fitting in matters much more at this age than having common human decency, so it was a slippery slope that once started on only picked up speed. The slightly nagging and disgusting thing was, Levi himself treated Eren the same way he's internally scolding others for now. He could preach about how great of a person he was for the current, pleasantly spastic conversation and overly dramatic and romanticised apologies, but he'd be nothing greater than a hypocrite to bring it up now.

"What's _fucking_ up, Yeager?" Isabel's hands slammed into the wooden plateau of Eren's desk, toppling in her direction with the amount of added force to one corner. Levi felt a pang of something shoot through him, unable to put a name to it. It felt like his heart had dropped-not into his stomach, but slightly further down his ribcage-and the sudden jolt of movement sent an electric wave through his body. It was the sort of electricity that ignited in the pre-movement before twitching-only there was no movement other than the few throbbing heartbeats. Levi reached out with trembling hands and pulled his friend's closer to him, putting a few extra inches between her and Eren. Even when his hands dropped back to his sides, he felt the sweat forming against his palms.

"That was a swear," Farlan added, hands stuffed in his pockets while he playfully kicked at the girl's knee. She stumbled forward slightly, grabbing onto Levi for balance before whipping back around to face the blonde, her tongue out. The pair continued on mock fighting, leaving the unidentified feeling in Levi's chest to spread as his eyes remained on Eren. He didn't look any more timid or frightened than he had ever before, but the aura around him has shifted. It was like his mouth was sewn shut. He didn't even look in Levi's direction. He simply stared down at the hands sitting in his lap.

"What was that for?" Levi croaked, the suffocating feeling wrapping itself around his throat and pulling taught. Isabel and Farlan stared in Levi's direction before glancing at one another with confusion dancing in their eyes. A tiny smirk appeared on the girl's face before she shrugged and moved around Levi to firmly plant herself in her seat. Farlan followed suite, shuffling behind Levi's desk and sinking into his own, smiling at Levi with a slight hint of pity. Levi opened his mouth as he turned back to face Eren, but found nothing to say. He felt like he was missing something. Something didn't make sense.

Finally, he whipped around to lock eyes with Hange. Their face was stern, more mature and chastising than the delighted and bubbly conversationalist Levi had been dancing circles around moments before. A second pang of the unknown feeling shot through his body-strikingly similar to guilt but not quite making the connection perfectly. Guilt was laced just beneath the surface, a miniscule second layer to the main threat causing Levi's brain to jolt into panic. He was sure Hange was reading him-his thoughts, his body language, his energy, everything about him. He was on display and vulnerable and locked into a stare down. Hange's jovial face was replaced with a slight grimace, shaking their head-a motion he might have missed if he wasn't so focussed on this one moment in time-before slipping back into the carefree teacher mentality. With a kick in their step, Levi's teacher stood with a booming voice and called for the lesson to resume.

* * *

 

Levi stared at the note in his hand, a triangular piece of paper torn from the corner of his composition notebook during their quick grammar lesson.

_Come to the treehouse with us after school?_

He had folded and tossed the note onto Eren's desk as soon as Hange had turned their back, he was still expected to follow school rules as long as he was in this body, and he wasn't really looking to put Eren or himself in the spotlight anymore than he already had. The tightly creased paper bounced and slid dangerously close to the wooden edge, skidding to a stop perfectly into the brunette's line of sight. The students around them were hardly writing anything, and probably would have jumped with excitement if a note had landed on their desk, whether it was meant for them or not. But, Eren made no indication that he even recognized the paper was there, his eyes following the scraping of his pencil against paper. Levi watched as the note bobbled right to left with the quick paced motions of the boy's right hand, left there desperately changing his glances from Eren's profile to his hands, up until Hange turned around to face the crowd once more.

Eren didn't talk to him during lunch or second recess. As soon as they bell had rung, he had disappeared without a sound. As had the note. Levi may have tried to follow him if that sickening feeling hadn't left a stinging guilt in his abdomen. He followed the herd, helpless, to the rectangular lunch tables in the quad, sitting beneath a navy blue tarp to block whatever weather was waiting overhead. The tables were a light blue, chipped along the edges and faded from the rays of sunshine that squeaked by the protective tarps above. Each class sat at one long, continuous table: first graders with first graders, fifth graders with fifth graders. Eren was nowhere to be found. Even as the wild children burst into excited jogs out toward the playground, Levi didn't spot the mop of brown hair anywhere. He wasn't at the baskets of soccer, tennis, or handballs, or at the side of Petra. Levi made sure to eye the hooks of jump ropes and Skip-Its as Mikasa pulled him across the blacktop. No Eren. He wasn't climbing any trees, or skipping monkey bars, or playing Red Rover in the grass field, or keeping up with the intensity of a fourth grade tether ball match. The boy had, seemingly, vanished.

He reappeared back in his seat as the exhausted children returned to the classroom for their last bit of education for the day, facing neatly forward in his seat as if by magic. Levi would have spoken to him, maybe asked him outright what his answer was, had Isabel not been marching in front of him with her usual wicked grin. It was like she was almost waiting for both boys to make contact, but had been disappointed thus far by how said contact was made. Everything in the room had grown too docile, too casual. She was searching for an explosion. It was like his whole group of friends had been waiting-albeit with a varying spectrum of emotions-for some sort of big bang. Mikasa, Isabel, and Farlan waited with tapping feet and poorly concealed grins, while Armin, Jean, and Marco crossed their arms and looked away, counting the seconds until each glance to the side was over.

Just as Eren had, the note resurfaced as well. It sat in the center of Levi's desk.

He waited until the final bell to read the reply. He didn't know why he expected anything other than a 'no'.

Levi read and reread the note in his hands over and over, blinking and rubbing at his eyes as if the response was going to change. If he hadn't felt like enough of an ass already from everything he had done to the kid in the past few hours, he was one now if he assumed a violent outburst of an apology and a stumbling conversation were enough to drag both of their asses out of a mess. To make matters worse, Levi's small, childish, impulsive section of the brain had assumed anyone would feel honoured tagging along to the ever-famous treehouse.

Through the years, Levi seemed to have forgotten plenty, his recess meeting with his teacher and uncalled for torture of his neighbouring classmate were proof enough of this. But, he did remember his treehouse. It wasn't his, rather a shared base between his small assortment of friends, but he and Mikasa were the ones to make the initial discovery. It had been some day in some Summer years before now, on a day with no clouds that seemed to be perfect for playing in the thick woods snaking around the sides of the country town. The fort of rotting wood floated above the ground with spider eggs in every niche and no rope or ladder leading to its door. Mikasa ran to get her father while Levi made the painful climb to the gaping door. The space was large for a child, large enough to fit all of his friends with extra surface for leg room, and stocked with old records and toys, a pair of baseball bats with no ball in sight, and an array of startled bugs and forest vermon. By the next week, Jean's father had replaced the cracked wood and each kid brought the items they were willing to have out of their sight every night. Levi remembered they kept the records, though never used them, and added their own board games, binoculars, rubber balls, and other assortments of whatever they could entertain themselves with at the time. It was their own private haven that everyone knew about, but never dared steal. To be invited was the end goal for most of the kids in Levi's class; which only inflated their childish egos and filled them with undeserved pride. It was safe to assume that in this version of 1993, everyone was still the same in silently praying for an invitation into a child's Heaven. It was just as safe to assume no matter which 1993 he was in, Eren was just a little different than those around him.

"You asked Eren to come?" Marco piped up, voice kept low and close to Levi's ear, the taller boy's eyes scanning over the scribbled writing. The soft sound didn't stop Levi from jumping out of his skin and clapping his hands together to crumple the paper into a wrinkled ball. Levi opened his mouth to complain, only to be silenced as his new acquaintance put a finger to his lips, eyeing their shared group of friends scattered over the damp sidewalk in front of them. Mikasa and Isabel walked arm in arm, wicked smiles replaced by the sweet ones Levi held in his memories, chatting away about whatever it was girls that age chatted about. Farlan and Armin walked slightly behind the girls, dropping change into Jean's upturned palms and counting toward whatever they might have been struggling to buy, tension gone from their shoulders and boasting outgoing personalities. As Levi looked back to Marco, he understood: any and all conversations regarding Eren Yeager were to remain top secret, between them.

"He said no," Levi whispered back, unfolding the note, now soft with the many creases. He watched as Marco read over the question and answer, eyes scanning like he was attempting to decipher a new language. The longer he stared, the more embarrassed Levi felt, "It's not like he was ever going to come along anyway," he choked, roughly taking the note out of the boy's hands and tossing it to the ground.

"But, you asked him," Marco smiled brightly as he toddled around Levi and plucked the paper from the frost-covered grass, making small snowflakes dance to the ground from the green blades. The group took a sudden left, leaving the watchful eyes of the other children walking home and the passing cars for the woods. The initial trees were thin, dried from electrical currents of heat and barely strong enough to hold the nesting birds in the Spring. But, the deeper in one traveled, the wider the trucks and larger the numbers, with dead leaves scattered and covered by the thin layer of crystallized snow crunching beneath their feet. For the townspeople, they knew cutting across the entirety of the trees would lead you straight to the highway, if you turned left you might be farther along toward the city, but would still be stranded in the one road leading in and out, and if you turned right, you'd find the town center and nearly everything else. If a stranger were to pass by, they may find themselves turned around or lost with how similar every shadow on the ground looked. They might have walked straight into oncoming traffic and never have known what hit them. The snow clung to the branches and shimmered on the leaves. Levi figured there might have even been icicles gleaming off a few lucky sections of the woods, though they would have shattered with the gentle sunshine breaking through the clouds.

"So what if I did?" Levi shrugged, keeping his eyes in front of him-considering himself an honorary stranger with how long it had been since he'd seen these woods. Dark shadows of branches were broken apart by the soft beams of sky from above, making a paradise of light and shadow that almost looked like it came from a postcard. A few leaves still clung for dear life, crusted and a deep gold but determined to hold on until the buds of Spring pushed them to decay on the dirt floor. Mikasa and Isabel lead the way as the group took a right at a tree with hundreds of initialled hearts carved into its bark. He half wondered how many of those loving couples managed to stay together.

"So? It means you sort of hoped he'd say yes!" Marco smiled at that, almost like he had an understanding of something no one else had. They made a slight left loop around a tree with a frayed rope hanging from the thickest branch.

"Did not!" Levi spoke before he meant to.

"Did so!" Another slight turn around a set of trees that looked nearly identical.

"I did no-" Levi stopped, his breath getting caught in his throat. He tried to swallow the lump down, but his mouth had gone immediately dry, leaving a swelling numbness across the edges of his tongue. He stopped in his tracks, fists tightening around the straps of his backpack, nails digging into his palms. He knew he should move if he wanted to keep his knees from buckling beneath him, but all of his limbs had locked in place besides the shivering tremors starting from the nape of his neck before coursing through and snaking down to the tips of his toes and fingers. One minute he was seeing two of everything, and a blink later everything was as steady as it could get. Bile piled up in Levi's mouth, and it took him slapping his hands over his mouth to keep him from completely throwing up. He took several, staggered steps back, but it didn't feel like he was getting any further from it. It laid there, glaring at him with cold eyes, ripping him apart with its dilated pupils.

The body laid in the dirt, melting the snow around it until it was sitting in a puddle of liquid. Its hands were free but the rope burn flashed purple and swollen across their wrists, open scabs leaking clear fluid from where the rope tore away the flesh. Its legs twitched as it broke its legs free from the dried blood gluing it into the floor, forcing Levi to watch as the hardened brown cracked away and disappeared into the dirt with disgusting, wet breaks that oozed a new flow of red from the cuts in the back of its ankles. It didn't have the strength to sit up with the icy blue that coated its swollen skin, so fragile and malnourished that the skin might also crack open to reveal the bloodstains bones beneath. Its head lulled to the side as the deep cut through its throat only grew deeper and deeper, hanging on by a thread of skin toward the back. The upper vertebrae gleamed in the leaking sunlight, shining perfectly in one of the spots of light while its face remained half hidden in a branch's shadow. Levi couldn't see it through the black spots flashing in and out of his vision, but he could hear its teeth chattering with the ice cold breeze grazing over its naked body. The body jerked and shook with every movement as it tried to stand, its eyes shifting in and out of shadow and only glaring at Levi harder and more murderous the longer they both stayed in place. Grotesque bubbling noises erupted from its throat, fresh blood swelling before popping into new stains on its pale skin, the sound of a choked scream echoing somewhere beneath the sloshing sound of shaking liquid. It made noises that sounded like a mix between english syllables and pained gags, finally breaking a leg free with a push of its abdomen. The sound of flesh ripping away from solid ice mixed with the pop of breaking bones, so loud and haunting, Levi finally fell onto his back without allowing his eyes to break contact.

At the new angle, Levi could see its chapped lips coated in both dried and new blood, gnashing up and down and contorting itself into almost familiar speaking shapes. Its eyes looked less murderous now that they were on the same level, and more desperate. They were wide and gleaming with tears, though none actually fell. Its twitching hand extended toward Levi, fingers bent at the second knuckle, frozen with the way it had been left in the cold. It was reaching out to him, silently begging for something, and all Levi could do was stare, covering his mouth and choking down a scream. His shallow and swift breathing brought hot tears to his eyes, until the rise and fall of his chest matched the beast attempting to stagger toward him. He shut his eyes, counting his rapid heartbeats until they reached ten, then fifteen, then twenty-five, thirty, all the way until one hundred went by before he peeled them open and back in the direction of the monster.

It had vanished. It didn't even leave a single drop of blood in its wake. It only left a small puddle of water from where the snow had melted and showed the dead leave and twigs below, the dirt turned to mud with the rush of water. The tree behind the broken section of snow was thin. It didn't match the girth of the other trunks in this area of the forest, looking so weak a gust of wind could have knocked it over. If they took a final left here, it would only be another minute of walking before you found the treehouse. They usually skipped the other twists and turns, only using them when they were coming from the direction of school. The only tree the group usually needed to find their way was the thing stick growing in front of him.

There was no mistaking where they were now.

This was the spot Eren was going to die.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank my editor, Will, for being the only reason this chapter was actually finished (psst I've been stuck on the flow of this shit since October). You the real MVP.  
> -M.


	4. Chapter 4

When one finds themselves face to face with death, said one might expect a rotting skeleton shrouded in the carcass of what was once a black robe, silver sickle gleaming in between the spaces of ominously dried blood. He may beckon you closer, counting your footsteps as if they were the final molecules of sand left in the proverbial hourglass, before swinging his weapon and adding another stain to the collection. Or, he may be docile and gentle, taking your hand-if it was still there-and guiding you in the direction of everlasting nirvana or a fiery inferno. While the legends of the Grim Reaper-known as Death by the more sane-vary by culture, religion, and by individual beliefs, the one constant is that he is always frightening. By either his yellowed skull of a face or by the sheer knowledge one had passed on and left behind family, objects, a life.

Levi could promise you it's much more terrifying when Death comes to you in the form of a child.

Even though the monster had faded back into the depths of his psyche, Levi's entire body felt simultaneously locked in place and wracked with tics out of his control. He could vaguely feel Armin's outstretched palm against his back. Marco was above him, mouth moving like he was saying something or making a sound, however only the muted crash of ocean tides made it to his ears. Everyone's face was that of someone who moved too suddenly in a photograph, blurred and spectral like time had slowed frame by frame. Levi could feel them: sticky fingers stroking down his arms or up his cheek, crawling like maggots against his flesh. Every affectionate action increased the nausea. Every kind gesture was the next tightened inch of the noose. A nail in the coffin. Additional tolls in the knell. Every fucking idiom known to the English language couldn't convey the sinking feeling of his friends-his phantoms, his memories-extending their arms to cradle and suffocate. 

He realized he was standing, though everything shifted so fast he couldn't recall actually moving. Snapshots of interactions flashed before his eyes, detailed and descriptive but not enough to piece together a coherent timeline. Armin standing in front of him, trying to get Levi's eyes to focus. _Snap._ Mikasa watching from a safe distance with wide, glassy eyes. She stood in a state of shocked confusion, the only movement being her ribs expanding to let in short, shaking gasps. _Snap._ Jean and Marco counting upwards and downwards from ten, nodding reassuringly despite nothing changing. _Snap._ Everyone kept inching closer to him. _Snap._ One thousand hands scurrying over the hills of his spine like vermin. _Snap._ Everyone else had enough air, but Levi couldn't even quench the burn beginning at the base of his deprived lungs. _Snap._ His feet shifted their attention from instinct to obligation, skidding across the melting ice and pulling his body to follow. His wobbling legs made the initial steps seem like his first as he teetered from balancing on his heels to his toes. A dry heave of momentum propelled him forward, legs suddenly burning with adrenaline, and he abruptly put some distance between himself and his demons. 

The trees passed him by in a blur of brown and mottled white, flecks of light blinding him as they bypassed the layer of haunting branches. He didn't check the woods for the markings that served as the map to his easy exit route, taking turns at random and praying that his subconscious could make sense of it all. The familiar, stinging sensation reached from the back of his eyes, burning stronger as he found himself more and more lost. He could hear the frantic echoes of his friends calling for him, bouncing from trunk to trunk and begging him to turn around. No matter how enchanting the idea, he didn't hesitate. His feet didn't stumble for a moment. Nothing was making sense. His friend's voices were the closest thing to reality he could stand, yet the nervous inflections that ricocheted off the icy air sounded as intimidating and threatening as the monster crawling in the dirt. It wasn't real. None of it was real. What he had seen was a hallucination. Everything after was shock. It was fake, he wasn't in danger, whatever he saw was a figment of his own creation; Levi told himself every rational excuse he could, but nothing managed to shut him down. His heart and mind were competing to see who could race faster, his limbs burned with an overworked exhaustion, his mouth tasted of metal, the cold snow had melted and soaked through his clothes and created a firm layer of glue against his sweating skin. It was disgusting. 

But, the sensation of crawling, grotesque disgust, faded to liberation as the cracked sidewalk and asphalt shone in the distance. It lacked the haunting shadows of branches and the horrifying crunch of dead leaves that echoed into another set of footsteps behind you. It lacked whatever monster was reaching toward the back of his neck. He didn't care what backyard fence he hopped or what car might hit him if he ran into the middle of the road. Anywhere was better than here. 

The shift between the woods and the suburbs was as simple as the rays of sun being unobstructed, the ice mostly thawed against the angles of gutters, and muted sounds of life grew a miniscule notch louder. Levi glanced behind him, to check for 'monsters' or his friends he wasn't sure, as he knew neither had followed him. All that stood behind him was the tranquility of nature, trees standing firm and cradled with decay and concrete, still as a picture. Any ruckus Levi had caused was swallowed and lost when his feet left the dirt, any sign of his distress was sucked into the continuation of the world around him. Life had returned next to normal. 

"Levi?" a voice beside him chimed, sending a newfound shiver along the bumps of Levi's spine. He whipped his head toward the sound, heart skipping a beat as his eyes landed on the figure. He shared the same face and frail physique as his monstrous counterpart, but his skin sat unscathed- no slashed throat, no chipping fragments of dried blood, no purple veins pulsing. The figure before him, head tilted gently to the side and messy hair dangling in his eyes, was simply Eren. Levi scanned the boy over, counting the differences between the Eren in his head and the one standing, pigeon-toed, in front of him. While the monster was a product of nightmares, this Eren practically looked carved out of porcelain, despite the shiner decorating his left cheek. This Eren had the same, vacant expression the demon cast aside in its cries for help, though both sets of eyes were glossed over with a magnetic secret language Levi couldn't quite grasp. 

"Eren!" Levi responded, cursing himself for his throbbing heartbeat hitching his voice into a crack. Eren's eyes avoided contact with Levi's own, instead choosing to scan Levi's body up and down. The hem of his shirt and flannel, along with the majority of his pants, were soaked through from the melted snow, staining them a shade darker than the natural colours. Mud clung to his hands, only a few flecks of pink skin shining through the partly-dried sludge, while his shoes looked entirely composed of the brown silt. At both knees, his pants gaped open to show scrapes, most of the blood settled and oozing from the epicenter of the initial cut, with small portions dragged and faded from where his jeans had shifted the flow. His hair was floating in all different directions, sticking up where the wind had tousled it at each sudden turn. His whole body was covered in cold sweat dripping down the pink areas of his face where his erratic breathing sent his skin on fire. Levi figured he must have looked a mess- more so than anyone in this town had ever seen him before. 

"You're bleeding," Eren kept his eyes at Levi's knees, where mud and dead leaves stuck to the dripping blood and open wounds. "You should get those cuts cleaned up or you might get an infection," he sounded less concerned and more like he was reading from the health books at school. The thought struck him that Eren was the son of a small town doctor and convicted murderer; statements like Eren was stating now must have been less concerned parent and more standard practice. 

Levi nodded, casting his eyes down to memorize the dirtied rubber of his shoes. His vision blurred and created multiples of the same image, stretching the light reflecting off the small pores in the sidewalk until they looked like twinkling stars. Maybe his terrified sprint had caught up with him, or maybe it was the childhood trauma being revisited to rip open fresh wounds, or maybe it was the simple fact he didn't have a fucking clue what was going on, either way he felt ready to vomit. His stomach felt heavier than his limbs, weighing down enough to send Levi toppling to the ground if he even considered taking a step. It occurred to him he wouldn't know how to get home without Mikasa, and he didn't stand a chance at finding her if he tried. The thought was enough to send his heart hammering once again, eyes glossing over with compulsive tears an adult might be able to swallow down but a child could only release.

He started counting backwards from ten, nine, eight- every doctor he had told him this would ironically stop time- seven, six, five- his heart would follow his words and the world would stop spinning- five, five, five- when you open your eyes, everything will be gone, Levi-  _ five, five, five _ \- these fantasies are a product of trauma- five, five, five- what the  _ hell  _ came after five?- he couldn't focus on his shoes- five, five, five- he could hear the kids around his desk laughing when another attack set in- five, five, five- no one knew what he'd seen-five- no one cared -five- he couldn't sleep at night- six- he couldn't breathe when people stood this close to him- five- all three of his doctors' voices dimmed with the echoing laughter of his peers- please- _ five, five, FIVE- _

"It must've hurt," Levi glanced away from his blurred feet at the sound of Eren's monotone voice. His eyes fluttered until the snapshots around him sharpened from muddled shapes and fragments to an actual image. The brunette's eyes were glued to the mud splattered over the open scrapes at his knees, squinting slightly, as though already checking for any sign of infection. He seemed genuinely interested- or maybe even concerned-about the injuries. He didn't seem to pay Levi's silent breakdown any mind, "My house is close by, we could go there," it wasn't phrased like a question, nor did it hold the authority of a statement. It was simply thrown out into the wind, each syllable drifting away on the breeze, not waiting for a reaction but simply existing in undetermined space. Eren never met Levi's gaze, never giving a good angle of his face and allowing himself to be analyzed, never sparing a second for an actual response. He simply turned over his left shoulder, starting down the road toward, presumably, his house. He didn't seem to care if Levi answered. He didn't seem to care if he took Eren up on his offer and actually followed. Everything that needed to be said was said, every offer was already proposed, Eren had finished his section of the conversation. 

Out of the corner of his eye, the stiff branches shifted with the chilled, winter air, giving way to open spaces and passages through the forest. Hidden somewhere beneath the leaves sliding across the dirt were the dragging patterns of a monster, plunging it's chipped nails into the ground and gurgling childish syllables. It used the decaying trunks of trees to disguise it's disgusting figure as a toppled branch or knot of exposed roots. Levi didn't need to turn his head to know it had wound up following him, never breaching the surface into the light and gentle bustle of town, but close enough to where it's stuttering breaths echoed out from the wild and against traffic. In the woods was every ghost that haunted him and every memory that tortured this place, the earth shattering beginning to armageddon. Some feet in front of him, putting distance between them on the sidewalk, was the living facsimile of that cataclysm. They had nothing in common other than a face and the eerie aura that swallowed them whole and shrouded them in widespread contempt. This boy in front of Levi was one in the same with the monster eyeing him from the shadows, only a few days away from becoming a tragedy. Either direction his feet deemed worthy enough to take him was idiotic-a jump into the unknown with the same demon at opposing dead ends. He'd be lying to say he wasn't terrified. 

Not sparing a glance to the rustling leaves beside him, Levi followed after Eren.

* * *

 

Surprisingly, Eren didn't live in a house made of coffins and burning crucifixes. 

Levi had seen the exterior of the brunette's home earlier that day, but he could only retain so many mental notes in a situation such as his. It was one story, with a thriving, green lawn surrounding all sides, only giving way when the sidewalk bled into the pathway leading to the patio. Shaded by the overhanging roof, the patio was surrounded with a picturesque, white fence and four support beams. Four windows lined the street-facing wall, all sporting cream shaded curtains and black painted shutters that matched the colour of the front door. The walls were painted a bluish grey, contrasting the dark grey roof and pink rose bushes sitting right before the fence. Despite the leaves dying at every point throughout the day, the patio and lawn were clear-almost like the house was constantly prepared for real estate agents and a parade of video cameras. Every surface on the interior was just as tidy as the outside: freshly wiped tables, counters, and picture frames, and floors recently swept. The furniture was blue, grey, and striped, with wooden add ons and the overall appeal and cushion of a 1990's home video. It reminded Levi of his own childhood home: warm and full of natural light, though the effort gone into cleaning and the highly personalized walls were noticeable differences. 

Eren removed his shoes at the door, lining them at the top hole of a plastic cubby with his name labeled at the top. Levi followed along, gingerly handing his shoes to Eren, who lined them up in the cubby below his own, eyeing the floor to make sure no spot of mud found a way to the carpet. Levi could see the kitchen around the bend of dining room chairs, but waited for his host to take charge of the lead. 

The short hall they shuffled down held a sporadic assortment of framed photos. A photo of Eren sitting in his father's lap was the closest to Levi's short eyeline. From the size of Eren, he could tell the picture was already several years old,  he was maybe six at the time. The brunette toyed with a set of Mickey Mouse ears lopsided on his head, matting the hair over his right eye down to his face. He was missing two teeth from the bottom row of his mouth, but the little boy in the photo sported a wide smile, cheeks tinted red from the California sun and gaze glued to whoever was behind the camera. He sat comfortably in his father’s lap with his legs kicking out in front of him. Grisha had a smile of his own: more subtle and adult, with his head leaning into the back of his son's. Both arms were wrapped around Eren's tiny waist, almost enveloping the child into a hold so firm he could have disappeared. Grisha's eyes also focused just slightly off the center of the frame, twinkles of affection dancing to someone Levi couldn't see. 

Another photo of Eren sat diagonally from the last, showing a snapshot of an even younger child. Eren couldn't have been any older than three in the shot, sitting on what looked to be the living room rug, clad in red and white striped, footed pajamas. A boy Levi didn't recognized sat on the carpet with him, leaning over a half opened Christmas present to place a shimmering green bow in the toddler's hair. This unknown boy was much older, around eleven or twelve, with messy blonde hair and glasses slipping down his nose. Eren wasn't paying attention to the boy across from him or the paper accessory being taped to the ends of his hair, focussing instead on the scraps of silver wrapping paper the dangled from the box between the two. Several photos of both boys could be seen at varying stages of their young life: one with the boys smiling on their individual bikes, another where they trotted through the snow sticking to the crumbling grounds of a carnival. Each image would have brought a sense of calm familiarity, if not for the fact that the mysterious blonde boy couldn't be found in any photos after Eren looked to be around eight. 

The photo that caught Levi's attention the most actually sat in the center of the collage, contained in the largest picture frame, and the only one to feature one focus. It was a woman, with a kind smile and bright disposition that highlighted her young face. Her eyes were light brown, gold toward the center where the flash of the camera toggled the light just right. Her hair was a shining brown, slicked into a ponytail hanging from behind her right ear, stray pieces caught in the friction of her plucked eyebrows. Beneath her hair was a light yellow shirt, the gold sheen of a name tag just above the the edge of the photo paper. The name was hidden with the same light that brightened the woman's eyes, though the logo of some dinner stood just outside the range of that flash. A close mouthed smile graced her face, a gentle application of blush and mascara being the only drop of makeup-going against the lipstick and eyeliner craze of the 80's. Though her smile was gentle and coy, her eyes radiated the loving demeanor of pure joy. She might have been much more feminine and aged, but Eren was the spitting image of this woman-obviously his mother. Levi didn't remember seeing a face like hers around town before, never remembered her showing up to mother-son events at school, couldn't remember her name despite his knowledge with everything Yeager. He could guess what the circumstances might have been, but decided asking the question would be a step in the wrong direction.

Light flooded in from the sliding glass door lining the back wall of the kitchen, casting infantile shadows against the grooves of the tiled floors. Somewhere beyond his focus was a back lawn as trimmed and flourished as the front, a colourful, plastic swing set replacing the rose bushes. But Levi's eyes fell upon the way the door was cracked open a couple three inches, no other protections behind or in front of it, simply sitting open and breaking the barrier between two separate worlds. The wind passing through the abyss in the door whistled, drowning out the sounds of Eren rummaging through a plastic tub of basic medical supplies and the distant  _ tick tock  _ of a clock. The sound was hollow and broken, raising the hair across Levi's body and forcing a shiver to erupt down his spine. There was something especially spine chilling about the boy next on Death's list to be taken leaving an entry way open when no one was around to keep an eye out.

"It's for the cat," Eren placed the plastic tub on the counter, motion so gentle that the collision of both surfaces was washed away by the whipping wind. Levi couldn't help but look at the contents of the nearly overflowing First-Aid kit: an entire stack of individually packaged alcohol wipes, four unopened boxes of bandages-beige and incredibly simple for a house holding a ten year old-packets of burn gel littered the bottom, forgotten, several opened ankles wraps designed for supporting sprains, and a sewing kit, thankfully sealed shut. Beside the tub sat an opaque brown bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide, a Ziploc bag of fresh cotton balls, and a fifth box of bland Band-Aids, this one torn open and half empty. It was more medical supplies than a family of two would ever need, and yet the photo wall and mysterious disappearance of Eren's mother and the blonde boy could only leave Levi to wonder. 

"Huh?" Levi yanked his eyes away from the spread of tools to see Eren rising on the tips of his toes over the sink, dousing a blue rag in tap water.

"We leave the door open so our cat can come in and out of the house whenever she wants," the brunette wrung the excess water out of the rag, flicking his fingers free of dripping water before turning his attention back to his small clinic. On the opposite end of the counter, the side perpendicular to the open door, sat three tall, wooden stools tucked neatly beneath the rounded curves of the marble. Levi didn't wait for an invitation to take the middle seat, already catching on that Eren wasn't the type to worry himself over social cues and norms. 

"Oh," he responded, making up for the lack of bookends on their conversations. He pulled back the moist flaps of his torn jeans, showing as much torn skin as he could, though the actual cuts were hidden by dirt, blood, and fragments of destroyed leaves. The same layer of dirt clung to the palms of his hands and stuck to the spaces under his nails, and yet a wave of disgust washed over him as the mud squished with the shift of fabric. The denim was so weighed down that it stayed in place once Levi had pressed it down, a few water bubbles popping at the initial crease and rising back up to make a teardrop shaped arch. His knees throbbed with the blood cells rushing to do their job and clot, a dull pain pulsating with every heartbeat. Levi didn't remember feeling anything until his own eyes caught a glimpse of the damage, but if his body hadn't been running off panic and adrenaline, he imagined it would have hurt. 

Eren wandered to the other side of the counter, the wet rag dangling from his fingers while the other three tools were pushed along the bumps and divots of the tiles by the palm of his hand. His green eyes fell upon the dirt on Levi's fingers, now chipping away as the joints exercised their range of motion. He squinted as he had on the street earlier, setting the washcloth down and working through preparations. He gathered a handful of cotton balls, popped open the top of the brown bottle, shook the box of bandages until four, paper wrapped slivers slid across the marble, and even checked his own hands to assure they were clean enough for the job. At this age, Levi could still remember his mom, aunt, or uncle cleaning him up whenever he was hurt, fussing over him for not being careful and scolding him when he dragged Mikasa down into his antics. It made sense seeing as the adults cared much more about his well being than he did at the time-a child more often feels they're invincible rather than dispensable after all. But now, the thought of him being fifteen years older than what he might have seemed, well beyond the age reached to take care of himself, he couldn't help his rush of embarrassment as he watched Eren take the rag back into his hands and squat down so the open cuts were at eye level. 

"I can do it myself," he pouted as the boy positioned the wet side of the rag over his right hand and began gently dragging down in fluid motions over Levi's left knee cap. Surprisingly, the grime was much more superficial than either one seemed to predict, slipping away from his skin rather easily and clinging to the damp fibers of the cloth. 

"I know," Eren responded, not taking his eyes away from his work. The moment the left knee was cleaned to his liking, so thoroughly that the tiny, detailed bumps began grinding against the scrape rather than soothing it, the boy stood and cleaned the rag free of any debris. There wasn't much from what Levi could see, the worst section being a darkened spot of blue in the shape of a tiny palm, but it was still checked over twice before the process was repeated to his right knee. Eren seemed extraordinarily focussed, more so than Levi even thought capable for such a mundane matter, wiping with care until the cuts were left with nothing except tiny bubbles of blood at the corners. He drowned a cotton ball in Hydrogen Peroxide, giving no cliche warning that this was about to sting or even when he was setting it down. The kid seemed to be a natural at taking care of himself, so warnings and labels must have been either useless or no longer needed. Luckily, Levi was equally as capable and a little alcohol had never done him any wrong. The dots of blood smeared and vanished in the several times Eren cleaned out either wound, the sting eventually fading into a much needed sensation of cleanliness and order. His work was always checked over before he moved on to the next step, calculated and caring, oddly enough. Even the bandages were put on carefully, pressed down firm enough to seal away the oxygen but giving enough so there was almost no pressure on the healing cut. There were two on each knee, as that was the only way to cover the entire mosaic he had torn into his skin. They sat in complete silence, Eren simply working and Levi simply watching, neither boy full of anything to say and neither one itching to clear any air. Levi would even go as far to say it was comfortable.

"How's your hand?" the kid asked as he plucked the paper slips and soaked cotton ball from around his space on the floor. Levi could still see the sensitive blooms of skin under the spatter of dirt, almost blending in if it weren't for the gradient of shading from the index to pinky knuckle. He didn't expect the bleeding of purples, pinks, and reds to be gone, but he found himself shocked from the reminder that it had even been there. With the events in the latter part of his day, he'd forgotten about the night before and the sore, robotic movement of his right hand entirely. 

Eren's left cheek had similar hues of blue and red, though the painting spread across a much wider area and bloomed far more intense. The swelling was minor, nothing more than a slight puff several centimeters below his eye, almost as though one half of his face were twitching into a perpetual grin. Levi could already picture the ocean of colours melting into meadows and sickly greens and yellows, and briefly wondered if his hand might go through its own metamorphosis at the same time. Though it was anything but-the shared bruises felt like their secret. A tiny, boxed up universe only large enough for the two of them that had every force of nature working to push them together. Levi had dealt with Eren more in a set of twenty-four hours than he ever had before in his original run of ten years. And, despite the initial anxiety, fear, and rage, and despite the fact he still had no answers as to how or where he was, and he should be feeling nothing short of horrified at the corpse cleaning up before him-he'd come to find the brunette mysteriously charming and alluring, like a foreign alien nearly there but not quite blending in. Sitting in his kitchen made him human, speaking to him gave him life, a soul, something Levi couldn't quite put his finger on but something new that wasn't there before, "Shouldn't I be asking about your face instead?" 

"You hit hard," Eren spoke the words like he was simply spilling his thoughts as he dropped the garbage in his hands into the waste. It didn't really answer Levi's concerns in a positive way-or any way at all, for that matter-and he could hardly stifle the third apology creeping up from the base of his throat. He expected that to be the extent of the conversation that Eren would bring to the table, and prepared to spew said third apology if not to just fill the silence. So when the brunette opened his mouth to continue his chatter, Levi found himself pleasantly surprised, "You should be a boxer," He may have hallucinated it, but a boyish glint of mischief shimmered in the most distant corners of Eren's eyes, catching the light for just a moment as he turned his head toward Levi. The emotion wasn't reflected in the boy's face at all, but his eyes were glowing with the jaded joy of the six year old frozen in time on the living room walls. 

"I'll keep it in mind," Levi allowed the joke to linger on, finding strange delight in the way the tiny spark in Eren's eyes expanded into a warm glow. Neither boy laughed the way most would consider normal, but the way the stuffy air stretched to allow a warmer expanse of open space and the screen door lost it's horrific charm let Levi know they might as well have been keeling over at their own banter. It was such a foreign tug at the heartstrings that Levi's mind worked in ways it hadn't the entirety of this day: not worrying about the underlying motives or the changes in his memories or the way everyone around him seemed a different person than he had known. He just allowed himself to feel like laughing, watching the twitching way the brunette's lips curved into something reminiscent of Mona Lisa's smile. He wanted to think of the next quip, the next step in conversation, the next choice in a system that seemed more right than he ever thought it could be. 

Eren's expression shifted when the hinges on the front door creaked, all his features crashing down into the usual stoic nature. He stared at Levi with melancholic eyes, stern in a way he'd never seen a child fathom before, and a thick silence spread through the kitchen as the tension sank back to the ground. It was like a horror movie the way the door was shut so slowly, the creaking of the hinges snapping far enough apart that each beat sent its own echo ricocheting off the walls in the hallway. The motion was so exaggerated and chilling, it could have been mistaken for a breaking and entering. Levi was already looking for the landline hooked to the wall when Eren sighed, reading Levi's thoughts like he had with his curiosity towards his open door, "Dad's home early," he said simply. The elated tug at his heart crushed everything resting in his chest, knocking the air out of him as both boys glanced down the hallway-though neither could see the monster slinking across the carpet. 

"Eren Yeager, why is there dirt covering the entry way!?" a deep voice finally resonated, beginning from as far away as the front door, not yet stepping into the threshold of reality. Levi pieced together Grisha's face in his head-not the man hugging his young son on the living room wall, and not the devoted doctor who checked up on him every few years-but the mug shots pasted across the front page of local newspapers. There was something terrifying about the average human face when convict numbers sat below their chin and the word 'murderer' was tacked on to their list of achievements. He could imagine the mud between the rubber soles of his shoes drying with the indoor air, flaking off and scattering across the perfected floor. The sorrow in Eren's eyes told Levi they were thinking the same thing, hearts pounding in time as the predator began stalking down the hall, "We have a doormat for a reason! How many times do I need to tell you not to play in the dirt before you get it throu-" Levi couldn't tell if he felt like screaming or crying the way the lump in his throat devastated his ability to breathe. This man was convicted of murdering his son and Marco...even if it wasn't true, no one could resist their mind from convincing them they were helpless prey.

He stepped into the room, his shoes off his feet and his expression full of emotional rage-the opposite of his son's. His face was long, stress chipping away at his features and forming thick wrinkles until he looked much older than he might have been. Behind his round, wire glasses were small, dark-brown eyes, purple bags sitting under them to exaggerate the creases in his brows above. His long, brown hair was pulled back into a low ponytail, a few strands of bangs slipping from the gel and drifting in the wind above his head. A patchy beard scratched at his chin and cheeks, drifting into his hair so the lines never seemed to end. He wore slacks and a blue button up beneath the stereotypical white coat slipping from his shoulders. He looked oddly...human. He looked like a man exhausted from a day of work, angered at something so simple going wrong in his home as his mind worked in tired, irrational ways. He looked no different than the disheveled office employees that stumbled into their cubicles day by day, waving at Levi on his way to the office with their eyes closed. His barking mouth stretched to continue his rant, eyes landing on his son before snapping to the second boyish shape in the room. Grisha scanned Levi up and down, blinking several times in a futile attempt to erase the image. His reactions were just as human as his face. Levi chalked it up to his age, but this man wasn't as fear inducing as he would soon be perceived to be, "Oh? Hello, Levi," Grisha's brows and mouth relaxed into a strained smile, using a hand to matte down his sticky hair and eyes resting on Levi's face. 

"Hi, Dr. Yeager," Levi let the smirk return to his face, leaning an elbow against the counter as he rested the chin in his right hand. It was amusing to see the man work damage control on scolding his son over something ridiculous, and haunting the way both members of the Yeager family looked wary of Levi's presence in their home. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Eren pressing his body against the edge of the counter, positioned slightly behind Levi's plane as if he were hiding behind him. The boy's hands hung at his sides, visibly shaking through their attempt to seem casual. Grisha eyed both boys, smile still plastered to his face but left cheek twitching with the feigned expression. He couldn't read the exacts of what was going on, but something seemed off about this relationship. While the photos showed sensations of mutual love and affection, the picture before Levi screamed anxiety and fear. Eren was frightened of his father, and Grisha was frightened of Levi. 

"Will you be joining us for dinner?" Grisha's voice was smooth and calm, a separate person from the man that entered the room throwing a fit. However, the way his beady eyes glared into the center of Levi's own, almost daring him to stand and say yes... It wasn't an invitation. It was a threat. The previous violence was only hidden, weakly, beneath an exterior of a bashful doctor and family man. 

Levi slid off the seat of the stool, landing on his feet and stretching his back. He could see Eren shift somewhere behind him, stepping forward so as to remain as close to Levi as possible without attracting attention. The men in the room held eye contact for just seconds too long, neither wanting to back down from the unwavering gaze of the other, a testament to their will. But, Levi had to bend to the rules of his position: a child, "No, sir, my mother is probably wondering where I am about now," he chirped with a smile, skipping passed Grisha and toward where his dirty shoes formed a brown pile of dust across the floor. Eren followed at his back, stumbling when he stepped around his father, but never drifting far from Levi's back. Something was definitely wrong. 

"Ah! What a shame!" Grisha nearly sung, hardly hiding his relief. He followed the boys down the hall, watching as Levi bent down to place the shoes back on his feet, shaking the dust deeper into the carpet in a minor act of revolution, "Eren doesn't usually bring friends around," Eren was staring down at Levi with wide eyes, expressionless and silent as before but somehow screaming for something. Something didn't feel right, "Make sure to tell your mom I said 'hi'!" Eren's father ruffled Levi's hair upon standing, breaking into a toothy smile and ushering him toward the door. The large man formed a barrier between Eren and Levi, shoving itself into the space between them completely natural. And yet, something felt off. 

"Of course," Levi stepped outside the home, foot crossing an unseen realm when the cool air brushed his cheeks. He turned around to face the Yeager family, showing a smile bright enough to rival Grisha's in false sincerity. The picturesque interior of the home seemed to crack and hollow out into a void of black light, shrinking into the same pitiful expression that Eren was shooting Levi from behind his father's back. His heart caught somewhere in his throat, igniting the fluttering remnant of fear into twitching sparks in the base of his stomach. He couldn't explain why he held a newfound desire to capture Eren's trust and friendship, but the desire stood, unwavering as the towering monster of a man menacingly smiled down at him. It felt as though leaving this house would lead to the exact opposite of what Levi wanted, yet an eleven year old standing his ground would come across as oppositional. Something felt wrong. A distant sixth sense of something unsafe, the ticking seconds before the fall, something was wrong in Grisha Yeager's eyes. If Eren was to remain safe, Levi needed to stay around as long as possible, obey parental rules as closely as he could, "See you tomorrow, Eren," it wasn't a question. Eren looked confused yet thankful for the statement and nodded, feverish in Levi's direction. Grisha's twitching cheek reacted as he stretched his smile to greater bounds, upset. A bomb the size of a little boy's words had just been planted into his head, an army of cautionary tape seizing the thoughts he prayed were hidden. Levi bore it into Grisha's head that he would be back. He would be watching tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that. If there was even a chance he was standing before Eren and Marco's murderer, he would be back. 

And with Levi around, Grisha Yeager wasn't going to hurt a damn hair on their heads. 

 


	5. Chapter 5

_Tuesday, January 5th, 1993: Six days until Eren Yeager goes missing._

Solving a murder in the days before it takes place is much easier said than done. In most, if not all, situations- dare Levi say- it was entirely impossible. 

"Hey, Eren," the row of playground swings consisted of six units separated with a stability pole every two so each pair of swings was slightly segregated. The brunette sat on the farthest swing to the left, directly across from the continuous, brightly painted rows of monkey bars. Compared to the ones lined next to it, this swing was a piece of shit: the chain links rubbed together at the slightest movement to release the most annoying sound Levi had ever heard, the rubber seat itself was scratched and dented so much it would detach if someone like Reiner Braun took a turn, and the excess chain made the whole thing dangle lower to the ground, which Levi guessed wasn't a problem with how small Eren was. Eren hadn't really been using the swing like most kids though, simply using his toes as stability on the blacktop to gently push himself back and forth. The paired swing to the right sat completely vacant other than the cursive scrawls of frost from the previous night's cold. There weren't even signs that anyone had attempted to chip away the fragile flakes. One might mistake the swings as unpopular had the subsequent pairs not been filled with children kicking their legs into the air and attempting to maintain breathless conversations. Levi figured they must have been in a lower grade than his own since he couldn't easily recognize a single face. The ability to disregard another must have been a matter of monkey see, monkey do, "Missed you on the way to school this morning," he added, hands fumbling behind his back in an attempt to calm his nerves. Levi had lead the way in their small walking party, keeping the pace quick until deflating when Eren didn't follow his previous days pattern when leaving his house. 

The brunette kept his main focus toward Levi's face, though both understood it was an attempt to tune out the entourage of onlookers standing several feet behind Levi's back. He could practically feel the questions penetrating his head, some of giddy support and others of contempt, "I like to walk by myself," Eren shrugged, returning to his expressionless face and quiet disposition-setting the pair back to their resting zero. Based on the events of yesterday, Levi wondered how the kid would react if they were on their own. 

"I know," Levi wiped the neighbouring swing, watching the flakes of cold shatter and tear before they could reach the ground. The dual chains rattled as he dropped his weight into the rubber seat, chilled shivers shooting up his spine and tingling at the tips of his fingers. Without Levi to turn his back and block the way, both boys got a full view of the voyeurs huddled together below the chipping paint of the neon blue monkey bars. Jean and Marco swung from the metal bars, pretending to focus on one another while actually watching out of the corners of their eyes. Armin, Farlan, Isabel, and Mikasa, rather, chose to huddle themselves in a conspicuous square, arms folded and hips popped as they turned in succession toward the center with exaggerated whispers. Levi felt third party guilt weigh on his shoulders with every silent smack of their lips, his panic suffocating him as their usually kind gazes were filled with thoughtful malice. He didn't need the events of the day prior to remember Isabel's smile-the dangerously precious smile riddled with understated pride-meant that nothing good natured was in the works. It was some out of body reaction, an involuntary twitch of deja vu as both parties stared back at each other. It was the same fight or flight sensation as a pack of wolves swarming on a helpless rabbit. Yet, he couldn't pinpoint exactly why his heart began sinking down toward his stomach, why he felt so awkward in comparison to their interactions thus far. He felt he wasn't even worthy enough to glance Eren's way as he licked his dried lips, "Would you wan-"

"...eave me alone?" Eren's voice hitched with a pitiful crack, just like it had Levi's first night back in 1993. His face was cast down to the floor, eyes fixated on the canvas of his shoes that was spotted various shade darker from the melted shaves of ice drifting down. Brown wisps of hair covered the features of his profile even as Levi shifted in his seat in an attempt for a better angle, leaning forward and devoting his full attention. Despite the subtext of anger and sadness, the boy's voice remained completely flat outside of the single break, "For one day?" he continued. Levi figured he had taken too long to respond, or maybe he was misreading something. The two of them seemed fine yesterday, like they had settled their obvious differences, turned a new leaf, rounded a corner, all the other inspirational bullshit they write in self-help books. Why, now, had Eren reverted back into his shell?

Levi sat in silence watching Eren watch the group. Everything seemed whirling with a hurricane of emotions yet stood completely still. It seemed like all eyes were on them despite every child still playing, not even sparing a glance their way. The whole world seemed to rely on what Levi said or did next, "Yesterday..." Eren continued, turning to face Levi with his brows slightly clenched, "Yesterday you were really nice to me," it wasn't a thank you. That hint of sorrow that allowed a kid like Eren to keep himself emotionless had been washed away by whatever Levi had done wrong and- though it was just the slightest inflection of change- he sounded as angry as anyone was going to see. Levi was genuinely left confused. He couldn't read this kid. For God's sake, he was trying to help him and he'd somehow upset him. 

The personal gang of bodyguards stilled as Eren stood, rattling the swing behind him and sending hundreds of tight squeaks in the air. All faces dropped to gaping mouth and raised eyebrows, questioningly aimed in Levi's direction rather than the temper tantrum that scurried off toward the classroom. 

Yes, playing savior to a unknowing murder victim before there was any danger was statistically improbable. The chances only downsized when said victim avoided you like the plague. 

If he was any sort of time manipulating hero, he might have taken the time to review the clips of his memories and begin piecing together a drafted web of clues and possible leads. But, not only did the few hours he'd spent in this place prove his memory was skewed and something to be distrusted; they also wouldn't provide him any further information than what he already knew. The Levi of the original 1993 had and wanted nothing much to do with a kid like Eren, and the Levi of the second iteration had only gathered enough intel to know the Yeagers were the proud owners of a mysterious cat wandering the neighbourhood. While this was useful information for potential bonding in the near future, it wasn't cracking any makeshift, unfunded investigation break open. This town was just small enough that everyone saw and knew something about everyone. Someone had to see a neighbour acting strangely one night or creating a ruckus up and down their street or some fortunate kid gave directions to a pair of strangers scanning the houses in an unmarked van. A neglected shift in the breeze as everyone craned their necks away from the dangers of reality. It was something even a young Levi hadn't picked up. Who could blame him? He was a kid. Things like murder and kidnapping were the subjects of video games and movies, not life. That ignorance meant he was stuck in an traceless void of victim, suspect, and motive. 

"Didn't go well?" Jean met Levi halfway, dropping down from the monkey bars and rubbing his swollen palms together as Levi staggered from the swing. His face was stretched into a playful grin, voice laced with just enough humour to keep Levi from screaming. Marco followed suite, his sudden dash forward awakening the groups' usual pep and sending the remaining four forward to create a perfect circle. Their expressions varied from the slightly hopeless eyes of Marco and Armin to the chiding glare of Isabel to the thoughtful scanning of Mikasa and Farlan. Levi couldn't help but feel like they expected him to quip something right back. 

"You didn't give me the signal!" Isabel seemed to explode the moment Levi shrugged in her direction. She stomped her right foot into the ground and jutted her fists down with the force. She was pouting, puffing her cheeks and turning a dazzling shade of baby pink-though, she would never actually be angry with him. 

"What signal?" he groaned when he thought she might actually suffocate herself in her miniature strike. She lifted her right fist into the air, a few faux gold bangals clattering down her wrist until they caught themselves on the fatter section of her forearm. She kept it bent at an angle so that her hand didn't rise above her cheek, but didn't go lower than the curve of her chin- a ninety degree angle so it was thrust out in Levi's face. The thumb was laid flat in front of the knuckles, the hand clenched so tight her chilled red knuckles faded to a painful white. With a huff of her chest and her other arm placed firmly on her hip, she flattened the fist down twice as though it were the head of a human nodding. Levi blinked slowly in her direction a few times as she placed the affirmative hand on her hip in triumph, like she had won the battle. He thought it sort of looked like one of the first things you'd learn out of an American Sign Language study guide, but he couldn't fathom a definition or why he would use it or what it meant in the very specific situation of Levi taking a seat next to Eren on the swings, "Why?" he tilted his head, feeling in the wrong as her smile and posture deflated back into hunched shoulders and a pout. 

"I don't know! You made it up!" she threw her hands in the air, stepping forward and lightly pushing Levi just barely off balance. She was giggling, switching back into the familiar, sweet follower she was. It was almost terrifying how easily her smiles and personality could shift at the tick of a clock.

"To be fair, we stopped using it last year," Jean copied the gesture, turning the fist toward his own face and nodding along with it.

"Well, Eren doesn't go on the swings when we're around anymore," Armin fidgetted, entwining his fingers into twisted positions before unraveling them and starting over. Unlike Isabel and Jean, who seemed to be uncaring of the situation or more willing to make light of the treatment of Eren, his face was a cocktail of guilty discomfort and relief. Though Levi tried to provoke him, the blonde refused to meet his eye, too focused on lining his palms into peculiar symbols. He might have been immediately curious for details-deciding not to act on them as the eleven-year-old Levi would remember the exact reasoning why Eren wouldn't play on the swings with them watching. Even with the minute details evading him, Levi could think of a plethora of variables that would result in someone avoiding a specific situation. How many times could someone be pushed off a swing before they found it easier just to stay away? How often had Levi used that hand signal with the same dangerous smile plastered to his face? Why had _he_ invented it?

The swings no longer interesting now that their personal play thing had run off, the group turned on their heels and began walking toward the field of dead grass, brown and crushed into a swirling texture against the mud. For a long moment, he figured turning over his shoulder and approaching Eren in the private space of the classroom would be more beneficial in terms of answers. With the sick suspicion rising like bile in the base of his throat, Levi didn't want to spend one second longer with these little psychopaths. But, he had to follow the rules. Whatever rules the original him would have followed, he had to go along with or he ran the risk of creating further chaos than what was already about to ensue. So, rather than following on the backs of Armin and Jean, keeping his eyes on the classroom in the hope that Eren might run out being more the kid he was the night before, Levi pushed his way to the front of the pack, leading the way with his eyes kept forward and teeth clenched to hold back any screams of frustration. In his peripheral he watched the blue door of the classroom pass by an eventually disappear behind the brick pillars and the concrete handball wall with the faded mural of a graduating class years before. Levi figured he was well deserving of associating with said little psychopaths. 

Hell, solving a murder was so difficult, better detectives than he couldn't even come to a unanimous conclusion after the crime was laid in front of them. Of course, their main motivations were simplified to putting someone behind bars and controlling the public hysteria-try to force the shattered pieces back together and ignore the damage in every dropping cent of their paychecks. Though he was firm on his stance that he would wish Eren or Marco's fate on a very small pool of potentials, Levi's justification for appointing himself 'Hero' was much more self-serving than just sparing lives and stability. If this was some Life Support coma, he could right whatever subconscious wrong had lurked in his psyche for all these years. If this was a second chance at 1993, he could save his own life by saving Eren's. 

Levi momentarily forgot his much more athletic nature at this age as he slammed his foot into the side of the ball, briefly feeling the thing cave in in tandum with a hollow pop before it was launching through the air. It shot through the air like a lopsided torpedo, flipping over its own horizon while leaning all the weight chaotically to the left. It perfectly arched over the whole of the field, nearly making it to the chain-link fence wrapping the exterior of the school. It fell back down to earth with a flatulent plop, releasing air as it skidded, rolled, and eventually stopped in a worse condition than it had been moments before. The children around him scattered with newfound delight in all directions: Jean and Farlan taking the left edge of the rectangular plot of grass, Armin and Isabel shooting diagonal toward the right corner, while Mikasa ran straight back to retrieve the ball and ignite the game Levi didn't even realize he started. He couldn't tell if it was just the nature of a child to follow along with such simple pleasures, or if he really did have more control of the people around him than he initially believed.

"Thanks for bringing me my backpack yesterday," Levi pictured himself stumbling home after leaving the Yeager's front step, comparable to a drunken stupor as he attempted to retrace the steps taken earlier in the morning, reversing the long winded routine of getting to school. He had realized some time around a probable half-way mark the backpack straps that suffocated his shoulders had disappeared and left phantom pressure in their absence. As the horizon was beginning to dim the muted light of day and bleed into an orange sunset, and about an hour of taking wrong turns and passing the same crosswalk three times, his old house finally did come into view just as the streetlamp across the drive flickered on. He walked inside to an aunt preparing dinner, a mother holding to her promise of conversation on bullying from earlier in the day, and a mud slicked backpack drying itself just inside the foyer. When he and Mikasa were finally sent to their beds for the night, she explained Marco had walked her and the bag home not long after he had run off. 

"I wanted to make sure you were okay but you weren't home when I dropped it off," Marco kept his eyes on Mikasa's back, rocking on his toes to the silent rhythm of her heels hitting the ground, "Where'd you go?" 

It seemed vaguely unnerving to speak of Eren at all, like he was some ominous urban legend that morphed and distorted until any twinkle of his existence was cursed. Or maybe a second secret he and Eren were meant to share, another world the two of them were made to keep private. But, Marco was also on his valiant list of young boys to save from unimaginable fates and the only person who showed any sympathy or interest, "Eren's house,"

"No, seriously..." Marco snorted, twitching when the loud pop of the ball echoed from the distance, the ball rolling its way toward Jean. He held his smile, waiting for Levi to come out with his actual whereabouts. When only silence filled the space, he whipped his head around, sputtering a shocked, "Wait, seriously?"

"Seriously," he shrugged. He watched as Jean and Farlan fought over the ball, nudging it between each other's ankles and occasionally groaning when a foot missed and crashed into a shin. Jean had just dramatically fallen to the floor, clutching his leg in feigned pain when Levi could no longer ignore the eyes boring into the side of his head. When he turned to look, Marco was staring at him, eyes like a hawk. He'd never seen a smile stretched wider, almost to the bounds of unnatural, bunching the fat around his cheeks until they turned rosy and delighted. Despite the dull afternoon turning everything matte, fireballs dazzled in the upper hemispheres of his eyes, "What?" Levi turned away as he felt his face heat up-cursing his childish body for betraying him yet again.

"Nothing," he sang, extending the final note an octave higher than normal. He followed Levi's lead, diverting his attention back to the game, mature in reading a situation beyond his years. 

Jean was back on two feet, calmly stepping out of the spotlight as Farlan punted the ball across the field as Levi had done before. It mimicked its lopsided, fatigued movements as it teetered against the wind, eventually slamming to a stop just before a flinching Armin. It wasn't alarming in itself, the ball was flat enough that even if it did collide with the blonde's leg it would feel like nothing more than exhausted rubber. The noiseless alarms only screamed when Isabel wasn't standing at his side. She had run off at his side at the first sign of play, maybe choosing him as a partner so she got more connections with the ball-either way, Levi was sure she had been there. In his visual wave across the brown and grey blend he couldn't see her: not standing by Mikasa, Farlan, or Jean, not at the side of Marco or himself, and not running about between one of the six scattered members. His heart sank back to the same cautious fight-or-flight at her absence, the same way the world spun as she smiled, waiting for the signal at the swings. There was no plausible way to explain why, exactly, but something felt horribly off-putting. Even more alarming was the abnormal way he spun on his heels, without thought, running in the direction of the classroom door. 

The classroom entrance stood in small, concave square, creating a small opening large enough to fit two circular outdoor education tables and a few clay pots sprouting decaying flowers or thriving cacti. Between the supporting pillars of the building, almost closing the square between the classroom and the blacktop was a dark washed lattice fence, knotted with ivy growing between the diamond cutouts in every epicenter, just barely curling around the edges. Levi could picture the flower box sitting at the bottom on the other side, a single rose planted at the beginning of the year for every child in the classroom, some sort of Hange-esque project to signify the beginning of a new school year. With the white flower box, smoldering ivy, and solid fence blocking his view, Levi had to entirely stumble around the corner, almost knocking over the set of potted plants on the left most wall, before he could see what was going on.

Eren had both hands smothered into the loose dirt of the flower box, brown chunks cracking between his fingers and falling over the backs of his palms. Sprawled before his outstretched fingers were the bulldozed remains of three wilted roses, yellow and white petals tossed about below the surface of the dirt, giving way under the weight as they lost hold of their stem. The broad stems hadn't cracked, but instead bent over into oval arches with thorns both piercing the ground and reaching into the sky and piercing sporadic pinpoints of the brunette's wrists. His eyes were wide, staring down into the ruined array of untroubled flora in disbelief, not moving his arms despite the bubbles of blood droplets seeping from between the thorns. They were nothing more than scratches that would be healed in a day or two, hardly painful even in the moment, so Levi could only theorize that the shocked expression came from something more than something simplistic. Isabel stood at his back, arms not fully extended in front of her, but fingers still reeling with the energy of sudden movement, hands awake and reaching out with a shift in momentum. They hovered about where Eren's shoulders might naturally lay if he was standing upright. She wasn't smiling, though, only glancing down at the boy's rounded back with a blasé apathy. 

And Levi could see it so clearly. He could so vividly see the knots of Eren's spine, bending into his rat's nest of hair, dripping over into the fractured sprinkles of Easter coloured roses. He could distinctly recognize the way the boy completely froze, not turning to run like he always had and not heaving his chest to cry or tattle, but stopping for a moment of miserable time and just watching aftermath of chaos unfold. He could remember seeing from a first person point of view, his own small hands crackling with fireworks as they grabbed the backs of Eren's shoulders and nudged him toward the box, listening to the sound of his foot colliding with the base of the wood as a darkened figure flickered in the small gaps between the ivy. He could envision the short moment breaking apart in worthless cuts with every blink of his eyes, he could picture turning his head when the sound of rushing footsteps bounced off the blacktop and into the small square of open space, visualize the way the potted stems almost toppled over to create a scene. The actions and reactions of all from the day before slipped into perfect alignment. 

"He can't take a joke," Isabel shrugged, voice still eccentrically playful as she folding her tiny fists behind her back as if to hide any evidence, "I was only playing," Levi could hear his own voice replacing her girlish tone as he turned to face Marco staring at him with utter disgust and shock. He could feel the heartless lethargy as he explained the situation without explaining anything at all, not giving any reasons and never being asked begged for one. 

He could so easily call to mind the first time this exact situation had played out, in the original run of January 5th, 1993-or maybe a few days after. He could see the roles reversed, with Isabel never choosing Armin as a partner and never leaving that field, Levi taking her place and skipping toward the classroom with Marco at his heels. He witnessed with a distant sense of familiarity an eleven year old version of himself- the real one- forming the idea of wrecking the flowers and using Eren's hands as his weapons before actually putting his plan into action. And, though he couldn't recall any further examples future or past, he understood this hadn't been a one time event. Levi could feel it twisting inside his gut the way it hadn't when he had been a child, an intense punch of guilt down in his stomach as he could envision his childhood life with different eyes. Pushing him into flower beds or off swings, never once hitting him with the intent to do noticeable damage, but enough to do harm. 

And he could picture the flow of events from this moment to the next, the way a younger him had originally let it play out. In time, Hange would stumble out of the room once their eyes finally peered through the tinted windows beside the door and caught wind of the scene. They wouldn't have any knowledge or background to make guesses on, only the information presented directly, only what truth they could gather with eyes. Eren had his hands twisted into the dirt with flowers rooted in path, Levi and Marco simple background actors standing at the metaphorical sidelines with their mouths glued shut. Only when Hange's voice bounced and rattled the walls of the small cove would Eren finally turn around and shake the disgusting remains from between his fingers, but he'd forget to morph his disturbed expression so he almost looked guilty. He would refuse to use his voice to explain the commotion or blame the faulty party. And though Levi was sure now that Hange would have already gasped the truth of the matter, their hands were now tied by all three witnesses holding their own secrets. All four would go into the classroom, and Levi would lie to save his own ass, with Marco not once turning the tides and Eren never glancing away from the floor. He and Marco would be sent back outside to recess while Eren was expected to call his father to explain what he'd done and the punishment he would be receiving at the schoolhouse each day for a week. By the time recess had ended, the brunette wasn't shrinking in his seat, but had rather been taken home by Grisha. And as the new memories from last night of Grisha Yeager storming into his own house like a madman crashed into the previous world's knowledge of his son being falsely convicted and sent home, Levi felt his heavy stomach do a flip.

"Eren..." Levi spoke softly as he could, pushing passed Isabel. He reached out toward Eren's arms, at the cleanest line where the sprayed dirt finally ended. 

"Don't touch me," Eren spoke just as soft, uprooting his own hands, carefully, so the dried clumps of earth would only roll off the curved edges of his hand and fall back into place, rather than scatter around the base of the box. It was his usual volume, so quiet you could almost confuse it with a whisper, but it was enough to send Levi's feet back a few steps. At his side, he could see the blurred profile of Isabel's face shifting into a measured surprise at the sound of the other's voice. This was probably the most angered tone Eren had ever mustered in his life and it had stopped everything in its tracks. So much so that he and Isabel lingered on in awe as he slipped out of the defined square like a ghost, so quiet it was like he had never once existed there at all. 

So, to reiterate: solving a murder before it takes place with only two weeks to spare is really only made possible in board games. Situations like last night could only help save lives, even if the only detail discovered is that one of the inevitable victims was idiotic enough to keep his backdoor unlocked rather than invest in a litter box. Even those simple moments propelled forward some semblance of a relationship and Levi was in dire need of teaching himself to be thankful for those. Because, as many good intentions as he had stacked up somewhere in the coldest base of his heart, the very person he was trying to save hated him as much as a child could relate to that definition. Solving a non-existent murder was only made more difficult from whatever point he was supposed to go from there. 

"Isabel, we have to go," Levi broke out of his trance enough to get the words out, only realizing he had even spoken when his own lifeless tone hit his ears. He took her hand, feeling for the first time how clammy his palm had become, and began leading the both of them out of the isolated, hollow square. He didn't know what he was expecting, but he was stunned to feel her feet stagger along willingly, "Hange's going to come out of there any second," 

Levi ran his fingertips across the rough brick of the schoolhouse, watching how the variation of texture sent his hand rolling up and down with the bumpy waves. Though his hand began to numb from the constant, irritating motion, he made sure to remain close to the wall so as not to be seen. With the way Isabel followed, compliant, he figured this wasn't a circumstance either one of them would consider new. Just as the porous walls were interrupted by the sleek painted blue of the ladies restroom door, the squeak of icy hinges sounded with the scream of a monster against the deserted walls. Heavy footsteps resonated in a set of three before coming to a halt, calm rather than the erratic stumbles they had been the first time. He could picture Hange standing over the flowers, studying he damage, and maybe even rectifying the mistake before anyone else had a chance to come by. Though they had escaped the scene, they hadn't as easily avoided the misdemeanor. 

"How did you know that?" Isabel's voice was cheery, as if she hadn't been the one pushing another student or witnessing the muted quake of anger they had both awakened in another, like a replica of herself was the guilty party and she was simply the average, innocent child. Her green eyes were dancing with wonder as she shifted her gaze between Levi's face and the few brown hairs peaking from around the bend that was their teacher. Her smile reciprocated this glee so much that any malicious trait he might have hated her for had burned away and left her dazzling. 

"Lucky guess," he dropped her hand, still following the linear path of the wall before he broke away and turned toward the field,half hoping they would be caught in Hange's line of sight. He could see the deflated soccer ball skidding over the grass, coming to a stop as Marco place his foot on one of the black hexagons. He reeled back before sending the ball flying again in a skewed direction, several more children having joined in with delight and giggling whenever the punctured sound of rubber shattered the calm air. Rather than waiting for the nearly flat mound to reach them, they took initiative in running towards it on their own desire, though for each child who ran their was an equal number who stood in a permanent circle of fond watchers. With how many forceful kicks found it the main focus, the ball would be worthless by the sounding of the next school bell and thrown to the garbage before the day was done. 

As demanding as it would be from this point on in discovering insignificant aspects of Eren's life, they would hopefully couple themselves together and form secure bonds capable of answering 'victim, suspect, and motive'. Properly understanding even one of those points could lead Levi into the insurmountable, and being the first person-to his own, obviously intolerant knowledge-to change the course of written history. Rewriting something indestructible as time was essentially a retelling of David and Goliath. But, Levi figured if he could adjust simple fragments such as the immediate trouble of one child ruining a set of roses, he might learn to manage the fate of several lifetimes. Or, instead, he could only hope he could learn to mange that. At finite moments such as this in a man's life, all there was to rightly believe in was hope. 

And that was going to have to be enough. 


End file.
